All posts by Francesca Rheannon

About Francesca Rheannon

Francesca Rheannon is an award-winning independent radio producer. In addition to hosting Writer's Voice, she's a freelance reporter for National Public Radio and its affiliates. Recipient of the prestigious Nancy Dickerson Whitehead Award for reporting on substance abuse issues for her news series, VOICES OF HIV, produced for 88.5 WFCR public radio in western Massachusetts. She is also finishing a book on Provence (PROVINCE OF THE HEART) and working on a memoir of her father, THE ARGONAUTS.

Podcast

School Reform Wrongs & Rights: Dale Russakoff, The Prize & Kristina Rizga, Mission High

Dale Russakoff talks about her acclaimed new book, The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools. It’s about the ambitious plan hatched by Cory Booker, Chris Christie and Mark Zuckerberg to reform Newark’s schools from the top down.

Then, Kristina Rizga tells the inspiring story of an inner city high school that’s changing students’ lives. Her book is Mission High: One School, How Experts Tried to Fail It, and the Students and Teachers Who Made It Triumph. Continue reading

Podcast

Carl Safina, BEYOND WORDS: What Animals Think And Feel

Conservation biologist Carl Safina talks about his acclaimed new book, Beyond Words: What Animals Think And Feel. It’s an eloquent plea based on science and ethics for a major re-set on how humans regard our fellow animals. It’s a game changer. Continue reading

Web Extras

Web Extra: Read an Excerpt & Hear Carl Safina read from BEYOND WORDS

PROLOGUE
Into the Mind Field

Ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee.
—Job 12:7—8, King James Version

Beyond Words Jacket FINAL.inddAnother big group of dolphins had just surfaced alongside our moving vessel—leaping and splashing and calling mysteriously back and forth in their squeally, whistly way, with many babies swift alongside their mothers. And this time, confined to just the surface of such deep and lovely lives, I was becoming unsatisfied. I wanted to know what they were experiencing, and why to us they feel so compelling and so—close. This time I allowed myself to ask them the question that is forbidden fruit: Who are you? Science usually steers firmly from questions about the inner lives of animals. Surely they have inner lives of some sort. But like a child who is admonished that what they really want to ask is impolite, a young scientist is taught that the animal mind—if there is such—is unknowable. Permissible questions are “it” questions: about where it lives, what it eats, what it does when danger threatens, how it breeds. But always forbidden is the one question that might open the door: Who? Continue reading

Podcast

Joyce Carol Oates, The Lost Landscape & Ann Patchett’s Essays

We talk with Joyce Carol Oates about her wonderful new memoir, The Lost Landscape: A Writer’s Coming of Age (Harper Collins). It tells the story of her coming of age as a writer, from her childhood in rural western New York state until her launching as a celebrated novelist.

Then we re-play an edited version of our 2014 interview with novelist Ann Patchett about her book of essays, This Is The Story of a Happy Marriage. Continue reading

Podcast

Is The World Running Out Of Food? Joel Bourne, THE END OF PLENTY

We spend the hour talking with journalist Joel K. Bourne, Jr. about population, the threat of famine and new ways to prevent it. His book is The End of Plenty: The Race To Feed A Crowded World. Continue reading

Podcast

Juliana Barbassa on Rio on the brink & Ta Nehisi Coates on fathers and sons

We take the pulse of Brazilian society with journalist Juliana Barbassa — the forces holding it back and the people’s push for more democracy. Her book is Dancing with the Devil in the City of God.

Then, Ta-Nehisi Coates just received a MacArthur “genius” fellowship. We re-air our 2008 interview with him about his memoir, The Beautiful Struggle. 

Continue reading

Podcast

Remembering The Revolutions of 2011

Wendell Stevenson talks about her book, Circling The Square: Voice From The Egyptian Revolution (Harper Collins, August 2015.) Then we re-air our  2011 interview with Marina Sitrin about Occupy Wall Street.

Continue reading

Podcast

Marcel Theroux, STRANGE BODIES & Jessica Abel, OUT ON THE WIRE

Marcel Theroux talks about his new novel Strange Bodies. It’s a fantastic multi-genre romp — part sci-fi, part thriller, part disquisition on literary immortality. And then we pivot to the renaissance in radio storytelling, talking with cartoonist Jessica Abel about her graphic book, Out On The Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio.

Continue reading

Podcast

Refugees of War: Lou Ureneck, THE GREAT FIRE & Lissa Evans, CROOKED HEART

Lou Ureneck talks about his book, The Great Fire. It tells the story of the burning of Smyrna by the Turks and the rescue of thousands of civilians by an American. We also talk with British novelist Lissa Evans about her dark comedy Crooked Heart, set in wartime London. It’s about a young refugee from the Blitz and his rescuer, a small time con artist. Continue reading

Podcast

Sci-fi Imagines Climate Change: Paolo Bacigalupi’s THE WATER KNIFE & SHIPBREAKER

Paolo Bacigalupi talks about his new thriller, The Water Knife. It’s about the fight over water supplies in the American Southwest that erupts when a climate-driven mega-drought hits the region.

Then, we re-air portions of our 2011 interview with Bacigalupi about his sci fi novel for young adults, Shipbreaker. Also set in the climate-changed world of the near future, it takes place in Florida in a time of sea level rise. Continue reading

Podcast

Saving The New York Public Library

Journalist Scott Sherman talks about the fight to save the New York Public Library. His book is Patience and Fortitude: Power, Real Estate, and the Fight to Save a Public Library (Melville House, 2015). Then, we air part of our 2014 interview with Eric Alterman about his book Inequality And One City: Bill de Blasio and the New York Experiment. Continue reading

Podcast

Banking On The Extinction Of Wild Tigers

J.A. Mills  talks about her book, Blood of the Tiger: A Story  about Conspiracy, Greed, and the Battle to Save A Magnificent Species. It’s about how the survival of tigers in the wild are threatened by tiger farms in China. Then, Martin Windrow tells us about his memoir of a unique human/avian friendship, The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar.  Continue reading

Web Extras

Web Only Extra: J.A. Mills on the Climate Change Threat To Tigers

bloodWildlife investigator J.A. Mills tells Francesca how climate change adds to the dire threats facing wild tigers. Her book is Blood of the Tiger: A Story  about Conspiracy, Greed, and the Battle to Save A Magnificent Species.

Listen to the full interview with J.A. Mills

 

Podcast

Artists, Development Wars and Murder on Long Island’s North Fork

Christopher Bollen talks about his mystery novel, ORIENT. It’s about what happens when conflicts over development erupt in a community on the East End of Long Island — and several bodies turn up. Then we re-air our 2014 interview with Tana French about her mystery novel, A SECRET PLACE. It’s just been re-issued in paperback. Continue reading

Podcast

The Real Story Behind The Atom Bombing Hiroshima & Nagasaki

We spend most of the hour with Paul Ham talking about his new book, HIROSHIMA NAGASAKI: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath. We also listen back to an excerpt from last year’s interview with Naomi Klein about her book, THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING: Capitalism vs The Climate. It’s just out in paperback from Simon and Schuster. Continue reading