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

Alan Kronzek, SORCERER’S COMPANION and Studs Terkel Remembered

Studs Terkel
Studs Terkel

It’s Halloween, time to take a break, if you can, from obsessively checking the latest presidential poll results, and have some fun. Today, we train our literary focus on hocus-pocus by exploring the magic of the Harry Potter series with magician Allan Kronzek.  He wrote [amazon-product text=”The Sorcerer’s Companion: A Guide to the Magical World of Harry Potter” type=”text”]0767919440[/amazon-product]. The most popular lexicon of the lore that underlies the Harry Potter series, THE SORCERER’S COMPANION will tell you where to find a basilisk today, how to get rid of a goblin, or who wore the first invisibility cloak, among much other useful and arcane information.

[amazon-product align=”left”]0767919440[/amazon-product]

A best-seller, it came out first in 2001 and was updated and re-issued in 2004.  Alan Kronzek co-authored the book with his daughter, historian Elizabeth Kronzek.

Kronzek is also the author of [amazon-product text=”FIFTY TWO WAYS TO CHEAT AT POKER: How to Spot Them, Foil Them, and Defend Yourself Against Them” type=”text”]0452289114[/amazon-product] . Stay tuned to this site to hear Kronzek talk about poker with Francesca.

Also, we remember the great Studs Terkel, who died October 31, 2008 at the age of 96. We air an excerpt from an interview we did with him in 2006 about his last book, [amazon-product text=”AND THEY ALL SANG: Adventures of an Eclectic DIsc Jockey” type=”text”]1595581189[/amazon-product].

Podcast

Terry Tempest Williams, MOSAIC

Terry Tempest Williams
Terry Tempest Williams

In Part One of this week’s show, we talk with writer and naturalist Terry Tempest Williams about her new book, [amazon-product text=”Finding Beauty in a Broken World” type=”text”]0375420789[/amazon-product]. (Part Two, David Danelo talking about THE BORDER: Exploring the U.S.-Mexican Divide, will appear as a separate podcast.) Continue reading

Web Extras

Web Extra: Williams reads from Finding Beauty in a Broken World

Terry Tempest Williams
Terry Tempest Williams

Writer and naturalist Terry Tempest Williams reads from her new book, [amazon-product text=”Finding Beauty in a Broken World” type=”text”]0375420789[/amazon-product].

You can listen to the full interview with Williams here.

Podcast

Comix as Art and Politics: Art Spiegelman and Greg Palast

Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman

Host Francesca Rheannon talks with comix master Art Spiegelman. When Spiegelman’s [amazon-product text=”Maus I: A Survivors Tale: My Father Bleeds History” type=”text”]0394747232[/amazon-product] was published in 1986, (followed by [amazon-product text=”Maus II: A Survivors Tale: And Here My Troubles Began” type=”text”]0679729771[/amazon-product] in 1991), it exploded notions about the limited role of comix as art and literature.

[amazon-product align=”right”]0375423958[/amazon-product]

Winning a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992–the only comic book ever to do so–Maus is a memoir in graphic form of Spiegelman’s father’s experiences in Auschwitz and the impact that had on the artist’s own childhood growing up in New York City. His mother was also a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. In 1968, she committed suicide, soon after Spiegelman himself was released from a mental hospital after suffering a nervous breakdown.

Maus was prefigured in an earlier work, Prisoner on the Hell Planet and in 1978 Spiegelman included that and other works in a collection of his underground comix called [amazon-product text=”Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!” type=”text”]0375423958[/amazon-product]. Innovative and drawn in a variety of styles in large format–the book sank like a stone. But now Spiegelman has “re-birthed it”, as he told me, with a new 20 page introduction and an afterword. We talk to him about BREAKDOWNS and breaking conventions in the comix.

[amazon-product align=”left”]061525781X[/amazon-product]

Also, investigative journalist Greg Palast talks about the new comic book he produced with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., [amazon-product text=”STEAL BACK YOUR VOTE!” type=”text”]061525781X[/amazon-product]. With illustrations by Ted Rall and other artists, the book is about the threat of massive voter suppression in the upcoming election and how to counter it. [Note: the audio to this segment has been removed.]

Podcast

DISPATCHES FROM THE RELIGIOUS LEFT

We talk with Fred Clarkson, co-founder of Talk2Action, about the book he just edited: Dispatches from the Religious Left: The Future of Faith and Politics in America. We also talk with Chip Berlet about the essay he contributed to the book. And contributor and organizer Leo Maley tells us about how the religious Left organized successfully in Massachusetts to support marriage equality for same-sex couples. Continue reading

Podcast

Ron Suskind, THE WAY OF THE WORLD and ELIZABETH WINTHROP, COUNTING ON GRACE

Elizabeth Winthrop
Elizabeth Winthrop
Ron Suskind
Ron Suskind

Francesca talks with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ron Suskind about [amazon-product text=”The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism” type=”text”]0061430633[/amazon-product]. Also, Elizabeth Winthrop on [amazon-product text=”COUNTING ON GRACE” type=”text”]0553487833[/amazon-product], the story of an 11-year old girl working in the textile mills of Vermont at the turn of the twentieth century. Continue reading

Web Extras

Web Extra: Elizabeth Winthrop’s Discovery of Addie Card

[amazon-product align=”right”]0553487833[/amazon-product]

Elizabeth Winthrop
Elizabeth Winthrop

Elizabeth Winthrop paints a vivid portrait of the plight of child laborers in the New England textile mills in the early 1900’s. She bases her main character, Grace, on the photograph by Lewis Hine of a young girl posed in front of her machine. While writing the book, Winthrop went in search of the real person behind the photo and found out the remarkable story of Addie Card.

To listen to the whole interview, click here.

Podcast

David Cay Johnston, FREE LUNCH

Francine Prose
Francine Prose
David Cay Johnston
David Cay Johnston

Francesca interviews reporter David Cay Johnston about his investigation into how government policy is rigged to enrich the super wealthy. And Francine Prose talks about GOLDENGROVE, her new coming-of-age novel. Continue reading

Podcast

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

[amazon-product align=”right”]0061712744[/amazon-product]

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

The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power

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.

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Podcast

John Kessel, BAUM PLAN FOR FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE

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.

[amazon-product align=”right”]193152050X[/amazon-product]

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.

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