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

Carl Safina, THE VIEW FROM LAZY POINT

Carl Safina
Harold Bloom

Carl Safina talks about THE VIEW FROM LAZY POINT: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World. And literary critic Harold Bloom confronts the end of life through the works of great poets. His book is TILL I END MY SONG: A Gathering of Last Poems.

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Podcast

Agendas for a New Society: David Korten & David Wann

David Korten
David Wann

David Korten talks about AGENDA FOR A NEW ECONOMY: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth and David Wann discusses his book, THE NEW NORMAL: An Agenda for Responsible Living.
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Podcast

Jessica Speart, WINGED OBSESSION, Hugh Raffles, INSECTOPEDIA & more

Jessica Speart
Hugh Raffles

Jessica Speart talks about WINGED OBSESSION: THE PURSUIT OF THE WORLD’S MOST NOTORIOUS BUTTERFLY SMUGGLER; Hugh Raffles talks about his award-winning book INSECTOPEDIA; and poet Patrick Donnelly tells WV about the poetry program at the Frost Place.

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Podcast

Green Home: Eric Corey Freed and Barry Katz

Eric Corey Freed
Barry Katz

Eric Corey Freed talks about the book he co-authored with Kevin Daum, GreenSense For The Home. And Barry Katz tells us about Practical Green Remodeling. Finally, green architect Betsy Pettit talks about the deep energy retrofit she did of her old house.
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Podcast

Caring for Elders: Susan Jacoby, NEVER SAY DIE & Allan Teel: ALONE & INVISIBLE NO MORE

Susan Jacoby
Dr. Allan Teel

Susan Jacoby talks about NEVER SAY DIE, her trenchant critique of the myth of the “new” old age. And Dr. Allan Teel explains his innovative, community-based approach to elder care; his book is ALONE AND INVISIBLE NO MORE.

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Web Extras

Dr. Allan Teel Tells a Story About His Dad

Our model of caring for the elderly is broken — miserable for seniors and unaffordable for society. But Dr. Allan Teel says he has the solution — commonsensical, cost-effective and a lot more humane. He explains it in his new book, Alone and Invisible No More: How Grassroots Community Action and 21st Century Technologies Can Empower Elders to Stay in Their Homes and Lead Healthier, Happier Lives.

Allan Teel has practiced geriatric and family medicine in Damariscotta, Maine for 25 years. He cares deeply about his patients and he respects them. So he chafed at the isolation, helplessness, and uselessness so many seniors experience in today’s nursing homes —- places that are little more than warehousing facilities. His frustration led him to developing an innovative approach that uses grassroots community action and 21st technologies to empower elders to stay in their homes — or return to them from the nursing home or assisted living. It’s called Full Circle America and he wants to roll it out across the country.

In this Web-only extra, Dr. Teel tells a story about his own elderly father, who took care of an even more frail elder when the man’s daughter needed a respite. It’s a great example of the Full Circle America approach.

Podcast

A Place Called Paradise: Brian Kitely, Marge Bruchac, Kerry Buckley

Brian Kitely
Marge Bruchac

Brian Kitely talks about his fascinating novel about Northampton, Massachusetts THE RIVER GODS. Historian Kerry Buckley talks about A PLACE CALLED PARADISE, the collection of essays about Northampton he edited. And Abenaki storyteller and researcher, Marge Bruchac gives a tour of “native Northampton.”

Brian Kitely
In the local parlance of western Massachusetts, the phrase “The River Gods” refers to the group of powerful men who held sway over the business and political life of the towns of the Connecticut River Valley region from the 17th and into the 18th century. Northampton was one of those towns and it’s the setting for my guest Brian Kitely’s novel, THE RIVER GODS.

Written in a series of short vignettes, the novel shifts back and forth in time to reveal glimpses of the town’s history, as well as the personal history of the author himself — often seen through his child’s eye. The reader meets the fiery preacher Jonathan Edwards, the husband of accused witch Goody Parsons, Sojourner Truth and other notable and unknown individuals from Northampton’s history.

One reviewer called it “a luminous, perfectly sculpted novel whose sentences flow as easily through the mind of a nine-year old boy in 1960s America as they do that of an 18th century Puritan divine.”

Brian Kitely teaches creative writing at the University of Denver. In addition to THE RIVER GODS, he is the author of two other novels, STILL LIFE WITH INSECTS and I KNOW MANY SONGS, BUT I CANNOT SING, as well as two books of writing exercises.

Read an excerpt from THE RIVER GODS

Marge Bruchac
A few years ago in the dead of winter, Abenaki storyteller and scholar Marge Bruchac took Francesca on a fascinating tour of what might be termed “native Northampton”: the places and traces where the native Algonquian tribes of the region made their home at the great bend of the Connecticut River where later the English colonists founded Northampton. The Indians called it, variously, Nonotuck or Norwottuck.

They first went to Fort Hill, the very place Brian Kitely lived as a child and that figures in his novel, THE RIVER GODS. Then they headed for Hospital Hill, where the state mental hospital used to be — and some of its imposing structures still stand — and where the Indians planted their fields of corn. Bruchac explains that the traces of native American life are to be found in the Yankee culture that succeeded it.

Marge Bruchac is the co-author of the book 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving, published in 2001. She also contributed a chapter to a marvelous collection of historical essays about Northampton that were gathered into the book edited by the following guest, Kerry Buckley.

Kerry Buckley
A PLACE CALLED PARADISE came out in 2004, the year the town celebrated its 350th anniversary. I spoke that year with the book’s editor, Kerry Buckley. He’s the executive director of Historic Northampton, a museum of regional history and culture from the contact period to the present. It’s a collection of essays about the history of Northampton, MA, from the time of native peoples lived here and called it Norwottuck to the 20th century.

Website of Historic Northampton

Podcast

Jennifer Haigh, FAITH & Kristen Neff, SELF-COMPASSION

Jennifer Haigh
Kristin Neff

Novelist Jennifer Haigh talks about her terrific new novel, FAITH. Then Dr. Kristin Neff discusses her book, SELF-COMPASSION: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind. Finally, a review of Siri Hustvedt’s THE SUMMER WITHOUT MEN.

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Podcast

Three Writers on Nature: Elizabeth Tova Bailey, David Gessner & Carl Safina

Elizabeth Tova Bailey & friend

Elizabeth Tova Bailey talks about her beautifully written and poignant book, THE SOUND OF A WILD SNAIL EATING. It’s a memoir of a year spent closely observing a snail by her bedside while she lay bed-ridden during a severe illness. We also hear Francesca’s 2007 interview with David Gessner about his book, SOARING WITH FIDEL. It’s about his month’s long observation of a somewhat swifter creature than a snail — an osprey. Then Carl Safina reads from his acclaimed book, THE VIEW FROM LAZY POINT and poet Richard Wilbur reads his poem, “A Barred Owl.”

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Podcast

The Audacity of Hope or The Mendacity of Hope? Two Views of Obama.

Sasha Abramsky
Roger Hodge

Unemployment’s still high, we’re still at war, and the banks are still playing fast and loose with other people’s money. Has Obama failed — or has he just not yet hit his stride? WV talks with Roger Hodge about his book, THE MENDACITY OF HOPE and with Sasha Abramsky about his book, INSIDE OBAMA’S BRAIN. Each author has a radically different take on our 44th president.
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Podcast

Susan Cheever: Louisa May Alcott & American Bloomsbury

Susan Cheever

Susan Cheever talks about her acclaimed 2010 biography, LOUISA MAY ALCOTT and about her 2007 book, AMERICAN BLOOMSBURY, Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives Their Loves Their work.

 

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Podcast

New Novels from Francine Prose & David Vann

Francine Prose

Francine Prose talks about her new novel about the immigrant experience in America, MY NEW AMERICAN LIFE. And David Vann talks about CARIBOU ISLAND, a novel that explores echoes of his own family’s dark history. Continue reading