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.
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Jason Mott talks about his terrific debut novel, The Returned. It’s about what happens when loved ones who have died return to their families unscathed.
And world leaders are once again discussing climate change, this time at the UN climate talks in Warsaw, Poland. Meanwhile, the Phillipines is struggling to recover from supertyphoon Haiyan. We put climate change and conflict into context with Christian Parenti. We re-air our 2011 interview with Parenti about his book, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence.
Kevin Baker talks about talks about his newest novel, THE BIG CROWD. It’s the first of a new trilogy about New York, City of Gold; we hear a true ghost story from Steve Volk, author of FRINGEOLOGY; and Francesca reviews John Bradshaw’s, CAT SENSE.
Novelist and short story writer Russell Banks talks about his new collection of stories, A PERMANENT MEMBER OF THE FAMILY. And George Saunders just received the National Book Award for his story collection, TENTH OF DECEMBER. We re-play Writers Voice associate producer Drew Adamek’s February 2013 interview with Saunders in the second half of the show.
Rebecca Solnit talks about her latest book, THE FARAWAY NEARBY (Viking, 2013.) It weaves memoir, history and natural science into a contemplation of the stories that define, comfort, and entrap and free us. And Martine Bellen reads from and tells us about her new poetry collection, THE WABAC MACHINE (Furniture Press Books, 2013.)
Reading the poetry of Martine Bellen is an excursion into a fascinating labyrinth of language that evokes multiple meanings. Her work is more to be experienced with the heart than dissected with the mind.
Her latest poetry collection is The Wabac Machine — with reference both to the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, as well as to the past iterations of the internet. Fellow poet Charles North wrote:
Martine Bellen’s psychological and linguistic adventures in poetry are unlike anyone else’s. Celebrating the instabilities of our experience, her poems maneuver kaleidoscopically between ordinary life and myth or fairy tale, vital human concerns such as identity and dreamlike atmospheres where nothing stays as it appears for long. Her “host of unlikely divinities” display a reality that is never ordinary, always evocative.
Bellen is the author of eight collections of poetry including Tales of Murasaki and Other Poems, which won the National Poetry Series Award; as well as the novella 2X(Squared) and several librettos for opera. Bellen is a contributing editor of the literary journal Conjunctions.
A Zen practitioner, Bellen says there is an intimate connection between Zen Buddhism and poetry — a connection that informs her work. She explores that connection more deeply in the unabridged version of our conversation.
Cultural scholar Carla Kaplan talks about her acclaimed new book, Miss Ann in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance. It explores the lives, contributions and contradictions of white women who supported the African American cultural ferment of the 1920s. And we re-air a clip from our interview with Rilla Askew about the impact of anti-immigration laws on families and communities. Her novel is Kind of Kin.
Emily Brady talks about her book, HUMBOLDT: Life on America’s Marijuana Frontier (Grand Central Publishing, 2013). And Susan Stinson discusses her just published novel, SPIDER IN A TREE (Small Beer Press, 2013), in a new interview with Drew Adamek. It’s about the brilliant, 18th century preacher Jonathan Edwards.
Russell Powell (photo by Bar Lois Weeks)Thomas Cole — “The Oxbow”
Writer, artist and historian Russell Steven Powell talks with Drew Adamek about the intersection of the natural world and our place within it, as it relates to the Connecticut River, the metaphorical spine that flows through our region. And in this, our last episode in our special series The River Runs Through Us, we also air highlights from previous episodes in the series.
Our thanks to Mass Humanities for their support for this series.
Russell Steven Powell is a publisher, writer, artist, poet, filmmaker, blogger and agricultural historian based in Hatfield Massachusetts. For decades, he’s written about the arts, the environment, agriculture and education in the Connecticut River Watershed. He spoke about his work on Episode Six of Writers Voice’s special series, The River Runs Through Us.
Powell’s work is deeply committed to the intersection of the natural landscape and our presence in it. His work searches for meaning in the natural world and finds it in paying attention to the subtle, the present and the ever-changing landscape. His writing and artwork can be found at his blog, russpowell.net. Here he reads his essay, “Border Crossings.”
Our thanks to Mass Humanities for their support for this series.
Novelist Ivy Pochoda talks about her new work of fiction, VISITATION STREET. And children’s book Sandra Boynton discusses her new book and CD set of country music songs, sung by some of country music’s greatest. It’s called FROG TROUBLE.
Veronica Gonzalez PeÁ±a talks about her new novel, THE SAD PASSIONS ; it’s about a family of four daughters and a mother dealing with mental illness, set in Mexico in the 1960s. And ecologist Carl Safina talks about the new National Geographic film he narrates: GYRE: Creating Art From a Plastic Ocean.
Investigative journalist Jo Robinson tells how to choose the most nutritious plant foods in her book, EATING ON THE WILD SIDE: The Missing Link To Optimum Health.
And Maker and author Wendy Jehanarah Tremain talks about her book THE GOOD LIFE LAB: Radical Experiments in Hands-On Living. It’s about living well by living free or cheaply within Earth’s eco-budget.
Margalit Fox tells the fascinating story of how the ancient Minoan script linear B got cracked — and the forgotten female professor from Brooklyn College without whom it would never have been done. Her book is THE RIDDLE OF THE LABYRINTH:The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code. Then Anne C.Heller talks about her biography of Ayn Rand (encore from 2009.)
