Yearly Archives: 2008

Podcast

T.J. English, HAVANA NOCTURNE and Marisa Silver, GOD OF WAR

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T J English
T J English

Francesca talks with journalist T. J. English about the Mafia’s Cuba experiment, the parallels between the Mob and legal capitalism, and the role Mob activities played in spurring the Cuban Revolution into being. His bestselling book is HAVANA NOCTURNE: How the Mob owned Cuba…and Then Lost It to the Revolution.

Marisa Silver
Marisa Silver

Also, Marisa Silver tells us about her haunting novel, THE GOD OF WAR. Set in the arid landscape by the Salton Sea of California, GOD OF WAR is a powerful coming-of-age novel about a boy who confronts the need to balance his responsibility to his family with his emerging sense of self.

[amazon-product align=”right”]1416563172[/amazon-product]“Marisa Silver’s The God of War is a novel of great metaphorical depth and beauty. It stays with you like a lesson well and truly learned.” — Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls

Read an excerpt from GOD OF WAR

Podcast

Toxic Legacies

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[amazon-product align=”right”]1597260843[/amazon-product]Francesca talks with  journalist Nancy Nichols connects her wrenching personal story to the larger story of toxic pollution. Nichols grew up in Waukegan, on Lake Michigan. The lake has been massively contaminated by PCB and other toxic chemicals. She survived cancer but her sister did not. Her memoir is LAKE EFFECT: Two Sisters and a Town’s Toxic Legacy.

EPA Report downplaying Bisphenol A hazards

John Peterson Myers on Bisphenol A link to metabolic disorders in Environmental Health News

Podcast

The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power

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Jeff Sharlet
Jeff Sharlet

Host Francesca Rheannon talks with journalist Jeff Sharlet about his bestselling new book, [amazon-product text=”The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power” type=”text”]0060560053[/amazon-product]. It’s about the real “New World Order” of elite fundamentalism that threatens our democracy. Continue reading →

Podcast

New Fiction from Paul Auster and Jennifer Haigh; Michael Klare on Russia-Georgia War

Host Francesca Rheannon talks with acclaimed novelist Paul Auster about his new work of fiction, MAN IN THE DARK.
Also, Jennifer Haigh tells us about her new novel, THE CONDITION.
And we’ll also air an excerpt from an interview we did last year with Michael Klare about his book, RISING POWERS, SHRINKING PLANET, THE NEW GEOPOLITICS OF ENERGY. He predicted at that time that the next resource war could be between Georgia as a US client state and Russia.

Continue reading →

Podcast

John Kessel, BAUM PLAN FOR FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE

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John Kessel
John Kessel

Host Francesca Rheannon speaks first with speculative fiction writer John Kessel, who makes thought experiments about real issues by placing them in imaginary contexts.

His latest collection, [amazon-product text=”THE BAUM PLAN FOR FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE AND OTHER STORIES” type=”text”]193152050X[/amazon-product], brings fantasy, science fiction, and magical realism to bear on the relations between the sexes, the conundrums of time travel, the windfalls of fortune, terrorism, and democracy.

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Kessel is the author of numerous stories, novels, and a play. He’s a frequent contributor to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and he won the Nebula Award for his novella, Another Orphan. “Stories for Men”, which appears in his latest collection, won the 2002 James Tiptree Jr. Award. Kessel teaches writing at North Carolina State University.

You can download a copy of the book from Small Beer Press here.

Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout

Also, we talk with Elizabeth Strout about her latest novel, OLIVE KITTREDGE (archived interview).

Listen to Strout read from the book here.

Podcast

Climate Change, Past, Present and Future

The current climate crisis isn’t the first time human beings have faced global climate change. Extreme weather, ice sheets melting into the Arctic ocean, and mega-droughts lasting a century or more: it all happened before, between the tenth and the fifteenth centuries. The global warming of the Middle Ages changed civilization, bringing both great disorder and great opportunity.

The audio for this episode is available upon request for a donation of $4.99 to Writers Voice. Contact writersvoice [at] wmua.org.

Continue reading →

Podcast

Wind Energy Island, Milk-N-Honey, and Families of the Vine

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We talk with Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker about her recent article, “The Island in the Wind”. And Ellen Beckerman tells us about her new play, MILK AND HONEY. And finally, a clip from an archived interview with Michael Sanders about FAMILIES OF THE VINE: Seasons Among the Winemakers of Southwest France.

Podcast

Melody Petersen

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Maxine Kumin
Maxine Kumin
Melody Petersen
Melody Petersen

Host Francesca Rheannon talks with reporter and author Melody Petersen about OUR DAILY MEDS. It’s about how the pharmaceutical industry has put marketing above medicine and corrupted our health care system in the process. Also, Maxine Kumin. talks about her poem “Nurture”. Continue reading →

Podcast

New Fiction from Margot Livesy and Ellen Cooney

We talk with novelists Margot Livesey ( THE HOUSE ON FORTUNE STREET) and Ellen Cooney (Lambrusco).

Livesey’s stunning new novel is about love, loss and the ambiguities of existence. Told from the point of view of four narrators, it explores how they try to make sense of their world when their lives are upended by the unexpected—and how their human frailties lead them to make choices that they long regret. Continue reading →

Podcast

Margot Livesey, HOUSE ON FORTUNE STREET

We talk with Margot Livesey about THE HOUSE ON FORTUNE STREET, her stunning new novel about love, loss and the ambiguities of existence. Told from the point of view of four narrators, it explores how they try to make sense of their world when their lives are upended by the unexpected–and how their human frailties lead them to make choices that they long regret. Along the way, the reader is challenged to examine his or her own sense of right and wrong — and the power of forgiveness.

Podcast

Ta-Nehisi Coates, THE BEAUTIFUL STRUGGLE

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Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Coates

Host Francesca Rheannon talks with Ta-Nehisi Coates about his memoir, [amazon-product text=”The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood” type=”text”]0385527462[/amazon-product].

[Note: the original show episode has been replaced by the unedited, full interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates.] Continue reading →

Podcast

Poet Frannie Lindsey, LAMB

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Frannie Lindsey won the 2006 Perugia Press Award for her second poetry volume, LAMB. It was also the runner-up for the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Lindsey’s poems take up the themes of trauma and healing. Ellen Bass, author of The Courage to Heal, writes: Continue reading →