Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Dan Fagin talks about his terrific history of what went down at Tom’s River New Jersey after a chemical plant moved in. His book is TOM’S RIVER: A Story of Science and Salvation. And Ed Brown discusses his prizewinning documentary, UNACCEPTABLE LEVELS. It’s about the environmental toxins threatening our kids and ourselves.
Dan Fagin won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2014 for TOM’S RIVER.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
The late Anthony Lewis on his “biography of the First Amendment,” Freedom for the Thought That We Hate. Lewis died on March 25, 2013. And Edward Ball talks with Drew Adamek about his book, The Inventor and the Tycoon. It’s about how modern media were born out of an unlikely partnership between a tycoon and an inventor who was a murderer.
THANK YOU From Writers Voice Hosts Drew Adamek and Francesca Rheannon
We want to send a big shout out of thanks to all who sent in donations to our Kickstarter Campaign to support our special series, The River Runs Through Us. We’re happy to report we exceeded our goal and have been able to heave a huge sigh of relief. Thanks SO much — and tune in to our next episode of The River Runs Through Us, coming up next week on WV. We’ll be listing our supporters on this website in the coming weeks. Continue reading
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Composer Roger Ames talks about writing music for voice and about his latest projects, including “Laudate Dominum” and a musical adaptation of How Green Was My Valley. Also Aaron Lansky of the Yiddish Book Center talks about his memoir, OUTWITTING HISTORY in a 2006 encore interview.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Journalist Chris Hedges talks about EMPIRE OF ILLUSION: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. He says Americans are in thrall to a culture of narcissism, revenge, and fake “happiness” that is destroying our democracy — and our power to connect genuinely with others. And former Army intelligence officer and constitutional scholar Chris Pyle says the Bush Administration is GETTING AWAY WITH TORTURE. He tells us about secret government, war crimes, and the rule of law. Continue reading
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
We speak with former U.S. Poet Laureate Richard Wilbur about new poems and old, the art of translation, and his evolution as a poet. Â Richard Wilbur is one of America’s greatest living poets. He earned the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice, once in 1957 and then again in 1989, and was named the U.S. Poet Laureate in 1987. Wilbur also reads from his work for us.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Film critic Molly Haskell talks about her finely written treatment of the American classic (book and film) Gone With the Wind. It’s called FRANKLY MY DEAR: Gone with the Wind Revisited. After that, we visit the Enchanted Circle Theater’s  production of The Skinner Servants Tour. Continue reading
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
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: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
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
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
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
Host Francesca Rheannon talks with two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anthony Lewis about his pithy and thought-provoking “biography” of the First Amendment, FREEDOM FOR THE THOUGHT WE HATE.
The news today about a possible war impending between Georgia and Russia is prefigured in our first interview: host Francesca Rheannon talks with energy security expert Michael Klare about the dangerous new global order of energy politics — winners and losers, flashpoints of conflict, and what it means for democracy and the environment. His book is RISING POWERS, SHRINKING PLANET: The New Geopolitics of Energy. In our conversation Klare notes that Georgia could the the flashpoint not only of war between Russia and Georgia–but between Russia and the United States.
Also, New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau broke the story on warrantless domestic spying. His book is BUSH’S LAW: The Remaking of American Justice.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Host Francesca Rheannon talks with Nicholson Baker about his acclaimed new book, [amazon-product text=”HUMAN SMOKE: The Beginnings of World War II; The End of Civilization” type=”text”]1416567844[/amazon-product].
[amazon-product align=”right”]1416567844[/amazon-product]
In a departure from his usual genre, fiction, Baker turns his eye for telling detail to an examination of the cavalier disregard for the human consequences of war by leaders on all sides of the conflict. We hear about how Churchill’s warmongering and Roosevelt’s anti-Semitism exacerbated the war’s civilian toll. We also hear of the courage of a few who dared to speak against the headlong rush to battle.
Also, we air an excerpt from our 2006 interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Maxine Kumin.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Ford talks about [amazon-product text=”THE LAY OF THE LAND” type=”text”]0679776672[/amazon-product]. Also, Scott Ritter, on [amazon-product text=”Target Iran: The Truth About the White Houses Plans for Regime Change” type=”text”]1560259361[/amazon-product]. Continue reading