KRCB-FM: A Novel Idea: Recent Episodes
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Non-fiction to pulp fiction, host Rosemary Manchester and producer Suzanne M. Lang explore the world of books featuring conversations with writers, academics, and readers. It’s a novel idea.
Author and independent historian Michael Morey’s book, Fagen: An African American Renegade in the Philippine-American War, unpacks American imperialism abroad, American racism at home, and the intersection that holds David Fagen, an African-American Buffalo Soldier who joined the other side and fought with the Filipino guerrilla soldiers against their common enemy: the white American oppressors. It’s a fascinating story that ripples into our current moment. Michael Morey joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation on A Novel Idea.
At age twenty-one, while studying music abroad, Carol Rosenberger was struck with polio resulting in paralysis of the very muscles she needed to play the piano. Despite a dismal prognosis, Carol struggled to retool her neural pathways and restore her ability to play again. She not only regained her musical life, but emerged as an incredible pianist and recording artist. She tells her story in To Play Again, a Memoir of Musical Survival, just nominated for a May Sarton Women’s Book Award. Carol joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation. It’s A Novel Idea.
Barbara L. Baer, publisher of Floreant Press and author of two previous novels joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation on her latest book set in the south of India, The Last Devadasi, where passionate and forbidden love clashes with tradition and caste.
Later in the show Suzanne visits with Hilary Moore and members of the Off the Page Readers Theater who will preview pieces from their winter show, What Goes Around.
Love, Hate, & Other Filters is Samira Ahmed’s novel of a young Muslim American woman finding her way through contemporary cultural challenges. Samira is in conversation with Suzanne M. Lang on KRCB’s A Novel Idea. Suzanne also talks with founder and editor of Audiofile Magazine, Robin Whitten.
Oil makes the world go round and geologist Thomas E. Cochrane delivers candid and lively remembrances of his life and experience in the American petroleum industry in Tornadoes, Rattlesnakes & Oil, a Wildcatter’s Memories of Hunting for “Black Gold”. Cochrane is a natural born storyteller. Join Suzanne M. Lang in conversation with Thomas E. Cochrane on A Novel Idea.
This moment in history, in culture, in our election cycle demands truth and craves heroes. We cover both with Suzanne Lang on KRCB’s A Novel Idea.
Me Too has been building since women thought they’d made some strides in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s , 90’s, and ….whoops!
Barbara van Driel, former FBI agent —serving during the initial wave of gender integration, tells a fun, disturbing, and altogether eye-opening view of the FBI during that time that resonates into our current moment in It Never Happened: FBI Negligence and Duplicity Revealed from the Inside Out.
Oh, we need some heroes. They CAN be elected. Andrew Shaffer brings Joe Biden and Barack Obama back to us. They continue to serve, but this time as crime solvers and good buddies in Shaffer’s Hope Never Dies (an Obama Biden Mystery).
Join Suzanne M. Lang in conversation with former FBI Agent Barbara van Driel and NY Times best selling author Andrew Shaffer on KRCB’s A Novel Idea.
Seaweed. It plays a vital role in ocean ecology, and also in our health and diet, and in our local and global economies. Seaweed Chronicles: A World at the Water’s Edge is Susan Hand Shetterly’s book of stories about seaweed, and the people and creatures who depend upon it. Shetterly joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation with KRCB’s A Novel Idea.
Gregory Crouch joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation on his epic western history of California wealth and the Comstock Lode, bringing focus to one of the wealthiest men in the world ….who we never heard of…John Mackay. The book is The Bonanza King: John Mackay and the Battle Over the Greatest Riches in the American West.
Suzanne Lang speaks with author Cynthia Lim, whose book Wherever You Are, A Memoir of Love, Marriage, and Brain Injury is an odyssey through loss and disability in the aftermath of her husband’s suffering an anoxic brain injury as a result of a heart attack; it’s a tale of her life of self-empowerment, care-giving, and sustaining love.
Suzanne also speaks with Susan Avery Stewart, who shows us the many virtues that grace our lives through lifes’ transitions in her guide toward better living, Winter’s Graces: the Surprising Gifts of Later Life.
Jonah Raskin has a large and ranging body of non-fiction books and articles and now has come out with a detective fiction of a different order, Dark Land, Dark Mirror.
San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore, the landmark independent bookstore founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin, recently featured rising author Bruce Holbert in conversation with KRCB’s Suzanne M. Lang in an evening hosted by Peter Maravelis. Holbert’s latest novel is Whiskey —“A gut-punch of a bleak family saga that satisfies on many levels.” says Kirkus Reviews.
A timely encore presentation of Rosemary Manchester in conversation with Brad Herzog, collaborator on Carolyn Goodman’s memoir, My Mantelpiece: a Memoir of Survival and Social Justice. Goodman, who died in 2007, was the mother of Andy Goodman, who in 1964 along with James Earl Chaney and Michael Schwerner, was murdered in Mississippi while trying to register black voters .Carolyn turned her son’s death into a mission to educate, communicate, and take action against injustice.
From Homer to Harry Potter, literary critic and philosopher Martin Puchner takes the reader on an epic journey through the history of literature, and so the history of humanity in The Written World, The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, and Civilization. This work is lively and accessible and Martin brings that energy to his conversation with Suzanne Lang.
A kaleidoscope is a plaything, an optical device that continuously juxtaposes elements in a mirrored chamber, generating constantly changing patterns according to the twist of the viewer. Alexandra Chasin’s Assassin of Youth: A Kaleidoscopic History of Harry J. Anslinger’s War on Drugs, does just that. Suzanne talks with Alexandra Chasin on this eye opening view of modern history.
It’s all about food. Suzanne Lang talks with Adam Federman on his book Fasting and Feasting, the Life of Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray. Gray became somewhat of a cult figure when she published Honey from a Weed in 1986.
Also featured is Elaine Khosrova, a gastronomic rock star who specializes in stories about food history and culture, and Suzanne talks with Elaine about her book, Butter, a Rich History.
To celebrate the release of Bruce Holbert’s third novel, Whiskey, here is a reprise of two previous conversations between Bruce and Suzanne M Lang on the release of his first novel, Lonesome Animals, followed by the truly amazing The Hour of Lead. Bruce is a gritty and poetic writer who explores character and landscape with a unique voice. We’ll feature a conversation about Whiskey on a future episode, but this show will bring you up to speed on the emergence of Bruce Holbert.
Tamed and Untamed, Close Encounters with the Animal Kind. Suzanne Lang talks with two of the world's most celebrated animal writers, Sy Montgomery and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. They have collaborated on a book of essays. Sy and Liz are also good friends and practically next door neighbors. Join us as we talk about the minds, lives, and mysteries of animals …in the wild and in our homes.
Two California writers who both had long non-literary careers before publishing these heralded first works join Suzanne M. Lang in conversation on this episode of A Novel Idea. Barbara Ridley’s When It’s Over is a sweeping historical fiction set during WWII that exposes elements of that war and on European refugees that resonates today …and is a pretty good love story too.
Laurie Ann Doyle’s collection of short stories, World Gone Missing, is a loving homage to Northern California and twelve searing tales of loss, love, and what goes missing.
Emerging from the economic consulting and the tech sector, Jaime B. Hansen aims to inspire and empower women through videos, speaking and speaking out; her latest book is Expanding the Conversation.
Also, born in the USA but as a baby but sent back to El Salvador when his mother was deported, Rand Ertll has spent a lifetime in activism. He eventually made it back to this country and grew up in South Central Los Angeles during the racially tense time of the 1980s. Randy discovered that education was a route out of poverty and violence, and he has emerged as a social justice advocate and activist, and the author of four non-fiction books along with the remarkable fiction, The Lives and Times of El Cipitio.
History, culture, and strong women are at the core of the two novels: The History Makers by Val Bodurtha and The Ballet Lover by Barbara Baer. You’ll want to remember these two authors.
Val Bodurtha’s first novel, The History Makers, is chilling, funny, and a smart coming of age story which imagines a contemporary Aztec civilization, as if the Aztecs had prevailed over the Spanish.
Barbara Baer’s recent book, The Ballet Lover, is set in the 1970’s ballet world, with Soviet defectors, and a searing event that has Rudolph Nureyev letting Natalia Makarova fall to the floor.
Featured on KRCB’s A Novel Idea, two novelists whose books hit big this year.
Fierce Kingdom is a thriller of a book by Gin Phillips, which takes place over the course of three hours in a zoo that is under attack by gunmen, and where a woman and her young son are trapped; ultimately this is a story of motherhood.
Rachel Khong’s novel Goodbye, Vitamin defies literary convention in its wit and lightness to bring us into the inner life of a 30 year old woman who has just been dumped by her boyfriend and is visiting her family, where her father has Alzheimer’s.
This episode of KRCB’s A Novel Idea features Suzanne Lang in conversation with Kermit Roosevelt on his latest novel, Allegiance, an historical fiction set in the Supreme Court during WWII, with the Japanese internment presenting moral issues that resonate today.
Suzanne also speaks with Larry Hendricks, musician and retired Oakland firefighter on the non-profit organization Oakland Firefighters Random Acts and the work they’re doing in the wake of the Valley and Butte Fires in Northern California.
Host: Suzanne Lang
This episode of KRCB’s A Novel Idea is an “encore” presentation of a favorite broadcast, originally broadcast in 2010, featuring Andre Codrescu and hosted by Monte Rio sage, Pat Nolan; it’s a tribute to Jeffrey Miller, who died tragically before he reached his full expression as an artist.
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Host: Suzanne Lang
This month’s A Novel Idea features authors Richard Michael Levine and Lucille Lang Day.
Levine has just published a short story collection, The Man Who Gave Away His Organ: Love and Obsession at Midlife and joins Suzanne Lang in conversation. Before turning to fiction and poetry, Richard Michael Levine was a magazine writer and editor for many years, publishing feature articles in Harper’s, Esquire, the New York Times Magazine, New York, Rolling Stone and many others. He also taught magazine journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. His non-fiction book Bad Blood: A Family Murder in Marin County, published by Random House and NAL, was a bestseller. He has published poetry in several literary magazines.
Acclaimed poet Lucille Lang Day was last on A Novel Idea when she published the improbable and remarkable story of her life Married at Fourteen : A True Story. She’s got a couple of new poetry volumes out, Dreaming of Sunflowers: Museum Poems, and Becoming an Ancestor. Rebellious and willful as a teenager, Lucy first married at age 14 and gave birth at 15. Between the ages of 14 and 17, she did not attend school. Never the less, Lucy rent on to receive her M.A. in English and M.F.A. in creative writing at San Francisco State University, and her B.A. in biological sciences, M.A. in zoology, and Ph.D. in science/mathematics education at Berkeley. A sensitive and perceptive writer, Lucy and Suzanne talk about, among other things, their common ancestor, Baron von Lang.
Host: Suzanne Lang
To honor Black History Month and International Women’s Day (March 8th) we present Rosemary Manchester with an encore presentation of a show featuring three generations of strong women of color: matriarch and author of When We Were Colored, Eva Rutland with her daughter Ginger and grand-daughter and namesake, Eva. Feisty, lively, and telling it like it is, the older Rutland, now in her 90’s, was making a living off her writing while raising a big family and tells that story in her memoir, When We Were Colored.
Big Nature, Big California
The Farallon Islands, remote and mysterious, is the setting of Abby Geni’s novel of nature and mystery, The Lightkeepers. Abby talks with Suzanne about the book and her own life as a writer.
Also, the Inland Empire of Southern California is the focus of visual artist Lewis deSoto’s book of photographs and essays. deSoto is known for his visual art, and his essays intimately expose his connections with his Cahuilla roots and the enigmatic qualities of this part of the state, where nature and civilization collide. Suzanne joins Lewis in his Napa, California studio.
Suzanne Lang speaks with Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, who has spent a lifetime observing other creatures and other cultures, from her own backyard to the African savannah. Her books have transported millions of readers into the hidden lives of animals―from dogs and cats to deer and lions. Thomas has chronicled the daily lives of African tribes, and even imagined the lives of prehistoric humans.
She opens the doors to her own life with Dreaming of Lions, My Life in Wild Places.
Black lives matter. Suzanne Lang explores the injustices of Jim Crow American and the valor of an all-Black battalion whose D-Day contributions have been largely ignored until now with author Linda Hervieux, who presents the compelling story of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion in her book Forgotten, The Untold Story of D-Day’s Black Heroes, at Home and at War. Also featured is Jeane Slone with her WW II historical fiction, She Was an American Spy during World War II.
Wendy E. Simmons is a world traveler. Not a novice. Not a pushover. Her trip to North Korea challenged every bit of her perceptions of herself and other people. Captured in her recent memoir, My Holiday in North Korea, the Funniest/Worst Place on Earth, Wendy tells the strange, sad, and funny tale of her 10 days as a solo traveler there (if that’s what you call having two minders, a driver, and never being alone except in her hotel room). The book is a publication of Rosetta Books and contains Wendy’s revealing photographs of the journey.
http://wendysimmons.com/
Mystery writer Kenneth Wishnia joins Suzanne Lang in conversation on his latest novel, The Fifth Servant, which is set in 1592 Prague, where a young Christian girl is found with her throat slashed in a Jewish shop on the eve of Passover. Ken is also the editor of the award winning anthology Jewish Noir and the author of a series of hard boiled thrillers that follow NYPD cop Filomena Buscarsela through the gritty crime scene of New York, including 23 Shades of Black, Soft Money, The Glass Factory, Red Glass, and Blood Lake.
William Luvaas, NEA grant recipient who has been recognized for his short stories and novels alike, joins Suzanne Lang in conversation on his third novel Beneath the Coyote Hills. Luvaas is attracted to the outsider, and his observations on the effects of wealth and culture on the human condition are at the core of much of his work.
New York Time’s bestselling author Meg Waite Clayton joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation about The Race for Paris, Clayton’s compelling novel of women journalists on the front leading up to the liberation of Paris during World War II. The historical grit and realism of the war is the backdrop for an enduring love story.
California forests and the rich natural history of Sonoma County are brought to light with Fred Euphrat, forester and author of Sonoma Mandala, a collection of essays originally broadcast on KRCB radio’s “Native Sonoma.”
Next, Donna Richardson Robbins, who has just published her father’s memoir Tractors, Trains, & Shipwrecks, Yesteryear recollections of Sonoma County, the handwritten anecdotes of Donald R Richardson joins host Suzanne Lang.
A Novel Idea, with Suzanne M. Lang, takes a look at California’s borders: the immigrants traveling over our Southern border rolling in on bicycles, and the furry, four footed immigrants, tagged and collared, reclaiming their territory on our Northern Border.
Kimball Taylor is a journalist whose curiosity reveals a story that sometimes reads like a bizarre work of fiction. The Coyote’s Bicycle, The Untold Story of Seven Thousand Bicycles and the Rise of a Borderline Empire follows trails leading from San Diego, Tijuana, and across the country’s military complexes. Taylor unearths incredible stories of human migration across our Southern Border and the bicycles that travel even further.
Emma Bland Smith has created a beautiful picture book, Journey: Based on the True Story of OR7, the Most Famous Wolf in the West, that portrays the story of OR-7, who came to be known as Journey, the first gray wolf to return to California in nearly 100 years.
This edition A Novel Idea with Suzanne Lang features two authors who go deep into our cultural histories and help us understand where we’ve come from and where we are through some darn good story telling.
Elaine Khosrova has written a book about Butter, and not just on how to make a good hollandaise sauce. Butter is one of our oldest foods and she describes for us the wonder to the palette of yak butter made in the old ways, along with the role butter has played spiritually, medicinally, and as an important food, for thousands of years.
Barabara Doud Wright, whose deep family history inspired An Awakening Heart a fictional retelling of the Moravian Brethren who settled this continent at a most formative time in our nation’s history, has just published An Irish Tale, inspired by her Irish roots on the other side of the family. It’s a lyrical imagining of the young life of St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, and the Pagan woman who loved and healed him.
This encore presentation features Rosemary Manchester in conversation with Jonah Raskin on his book James McGrath: The Life and Times of an Extraordinary American Teacher, Mentor, Cultural Ambassador, and Pedagogical Pilgrim: in a Class by Himself.
Manchester also talks with Alison Owings on her oral-history Indian Voices: Listening to Native Americans.
Plus, Barbara Quick reviews Italian author Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend.
Elite North Koreans struggle to protect themselves and their families in the face of a paraonoid, tyrannical regime in award winning journalist, Paul H.B. Shin’s espionage thriller, Half Life. Suzanne M. Lang talks with Shin about the novel, set in 1997, during the period when famine was devastating North Korea and there were a series of high profile defections.
Suzanne talks with Wendy E. Simmons, whose travel memoir, My Holiday in North Korea: the Funniest/Worst Place on Earth chronicles her recent visit to this strange country: a trip that blew her mind in ways she did not anticipate.
A Novel Idea with Suzanne M. Lang features Jessica Teich with her memoir The Future Tense of Joy. A Rhodes Scholar, Teich happens upon an obituary of a fellow Rhodes Scholar who took her own life by jumping out a hotel window, which leads Jessica on a transformative journey. Also featured is Cathy Wild, whose book Wild Ideas: Creativity from the Inside Out uses personal stories and analysis of her own life to identify difficult to articulate concepts of identity, suffering, gratitude, and health.
15,000 nautical miles, six years, and a world of insight ….Heather Lyn Mann joins Suzanne Lang in conversation about Heather’s journey as expressed in her chronicle of her life’s journey sailing around the Atlantic, Ocean of Insight, a Sailor’s Voyage from Despair to Hope. The book is gripping, funny, and rewards with Heather’s reflection on being human on a suffering planet.
Prolific author and curious man, Jonah Raskin joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation on his book A Terrible Beauty: the Wilderness of American Literature, which examines American literature through the lens of our contemporary environmental crisis. Suzanne also talks with with geologist Thomas E Cochrane, whose book Shaping the Sonoma-Mendocino Coast: Exploring the Coastal Geography of Northern California is a travel guide as much as a primer in plate tectonics. Something to consider when planning a roadtrip up the California coast.
Encore presentation of a 2013 broadcast features Suzanne Lang in conversation with author and poet Gary Soto and Rosemary Manchester talking with Gerald Haslam on the publication of his work In Thought and Action: The Enigmatic Life of S. I. Hayakawa. These are two writers with deep roots in California’s Central Valley.
A Novel Idea features two novelists, whose books couldn’t be more different. Both write about the challenges of difference, of motherhood, and of finding stability in a sometimes-hostile world.
Shanti Sekaran brings us Lucky Boy, the saga of two women, strangers and cultures apart, whose lives are connected through the life of an infant boy.
Shelby Londyn-Heath has written The Twilight Tsunami, a raw, funny, and hard-hitting account of the lives of people involved in the child welfare system.
Neo-noir and crime fiction with Suzanne Lang in conversation with Daniel Pyne, screenwriter, show runner of Amazon’s hit drama Bosch, and author of Catalina Eddy, a Novel in Three Decades. Suzanne also talks with poet and playwright Stephen Mack Jones, who has published his first novel, a crime thriller set in Detroit, August Snow.
Suzanne M. Lang talks with Thais Nye Derich about her path of self-examination and learning to discover that she, like many other women, was a victim of the medical establishment that denied her the human right of birthing her own child. Second Chance, A Mother’s Quest for a Natural Birth after Cesarean is not just a book about childbirth, but about control over our own lives and simply, about being human.
Also featured is a conversation with Cathy Langlois, director of the Spirit Horse Center in Northern California who has written Enlighten Up, Practical Wisdom & Spiritual Guidance for an Imperfect World.
Historical fiction radiates into the present with two novels featured on A Novel Idea. Join Suzanne M. Lang in conversations with Susan Sherman on her novel about mystics and Marie Curie, If You Are There and David Boling, whose novel is The Lost History of Stars, set during brutal Boar Wars in South Africa and told through the experiences of a fourteen year-old girl.
Top intellectual property and entertainment lawyer Peter Afrasiabi joins Suzanne Lang in conversation on his recent book Burning Bridges, America’s 20-year Crusade to Deport Labor Leader Harry Bridges. Bridges was an immigrant, a longshoreman, and a labor leader which was not a good combination in the 1930s. The imbalance of executive power in the federal government of that time resonates with our contemporary situation.
J. Jaye Gold has been a hustler and gambler in his life, but sought a new way of being in his that lead him on a journey around the globe, and for the past 35 years has assisted others in their search for meaning. He joins Suzanne Lang in conversation on his latest book Justin Time, Autobiographical Stories of an American Spiritual Master. Sunday, Octoer 29th at 4 on KRCB’s A Novel Idea.
On KRCB’s A Novel Idea, two authors at the top of their form —Joan Frank, with her novel All the News I Need, and Richard Alther and his book Roxie & Fred, join Suzanne Lang in conversation of art, craft, and character.
Joan Frank is acknowledged by many as a “writer’s writer” but more than that, she is a reader’s writer with keen observations, richly drawn characters, and unflinching honesty. Her latest book is All the News I Need.
Richard Alther is a painter and author whose novel Roxie & Fred delves into love over 50… Way over 50.
Both books explore the depths of love and loss, and the life available to us when we open up and let go of convention.
Suzanne Lang talks with Gayle Forman, a literary star in the Young Adult genre, who has recently released a novel, as she says, starring adults and geared toward that audience. Leave Me is the story of a wife and mother who leaves home to find herself.
Also featured is Suzanne’s conversation with Silas Dent Zobal, author of the acclaimed novel The People of the Broken Neck, a story about family, about violence and post traumatic stress, and a reflection on the legacy of each person’s life.