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We talk with graphic artist Joe Lee about his stunningly illustrated book, Forgiveness: The Story of Eva Kor, Survivor of The Auschwitz Twin Experiments.
Then Valerie Martin tells us about her new novel I Give It To You. It’s a many-layered tale about what happens when an Italian friend tells a writer a story about her family in Mussolini’s Italy.
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We talk with Ruth Ozeki about her wonderful new novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness. It’s a coming-of-age/Hero’s Journey that is heart-wrenching, inspiring, funny and deeply wise.
Then, writer Hilma Wolitzer tells us about her retrospective collection of stories, Today A Woman Went Mad In The Supermarket. It spans decades of stories about an ordinary couple, written in extraordinary prose.
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This week: two novels exploring love, trauma and the legacies of war. Both are based on true stories from World War II.
First, Jai Chakrabarti tells us about his novel A Play for the End of the World. It centers around a play written by Rabindranath Tagore that was put on by orphans in Warsaw just before they were taken to the death camp. Then, the same play is re-staged decades later, in India, as another act of resistance against tyranny.
Then, personal trauma and collective trauma intersect with a love story. We talk with Caroline Lea about her new novel The Metal Heart. It’s set on an Orkney Island during WWII, where Italian prisoners and British islanders find conflict and common ground.
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We talk with HonorÁ©e Fanonne Jeffers, award-winning poet and now novelist, about The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois, just out from Harper Collins.
Then, two young women build a literary empire around poetry and life lessons. We talk with Jade Dee and Wilnona Marie, the And I Thought Ladies.
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We talk with Megha Majumdhar about her breakout debut novel, A Burning. It follows three characters in today’s India: one, a young Muslim woman falsely accused of terrorism, and two others who must choose between justice and self-interest.
Then, rural America isn’t just poverty, opioid addiction and despair; it’s also community, resilience, and some remarkable young women.
We talk with Gigi Georges about Downeast: Five Maine Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America.
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We talk with journalist Nina Burleigh about Trump’s failure on Covid and what that says about our public health system—and capitalism. Her book is Virus: Vaccinations, the CDC, and The Hijacking Of America’s Response To The Pandemic.
Then, we shift gears to consider a remarkable debut novel by Celia Jeffries, Blue Desert. It’s about freedom and limits, secrets and what happens when a young British woman falls in love with the chieftain of a Tuareg tribe in Morocco in the early years of the 20th century.
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Today we talk with DC Comics & Warner Brothers comic book editor Joseph Illidge about his career in comic books, bringing diverse voices to the super hero genre.
We also hear a sneak preview of our interview with recycling maven Jennie Romer about her book Can I Recycle This?
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Parkinson’s disease. It’s an epidemic—and growing. We talk with Dr. Michael Okun about the book he co-authored, Ending Parkinson’s Disease: A Prescription for Action. He tells us about symptoms, causes, and new treatments.
But first, we talk with novelist Lionel Shriver about her latest foray into burning questions for our times. This one asks, as per its title, Should We Stay Or Should We Go. Should we cut our lives short before reaching possible decrepitude or should we stick around for come what may?
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We talk with Judy Batalion about her book, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos.
Then, another WWII story—this time fiction—told through an unforgettable cast of characters: we talk with Lissa Evans about V for Victory, the sequel to Crooked Heart.
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We talk with Julia Fine about her genre-bending novel The Upstairs House. It’s about a new mother’s postpartum depression—and her obsession with Margaret Wise Brown, the author of Goodnight Moon.
Then best-selling legal thriller novelist Lisa Scottoline tells us about her first foray into writing historical fiction, Eternal. It’s about a love triangle between three young friends in Rome during Mussolini’s Fascist regime.
We also hear poet Martin Espada read his poem The Fugitive Poets of Fenway Park.
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We talk with Eliot Peper about his cli-fi novel, Veil. It’s about what happens when a tech CEO decides to geo-engineer the climate—in secret.
Then, we catch up with author Paul Greenberg about The Climate Diet: 50 Simple Ways to Trim Your Carbon Footprint. It’s just out for Earth Day.
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We talk with Anna North about her acclaimed new novel, Outlawed. It’s about an alternate reality 1890s Hole in the Wall Gang—this one, run as a feminist collective.
Then Emily St. John Mandel is back from her triumph with Station Eleven with another exploration of catastrophe, this time the 2008 financial collapse. It’s called The Glass Hotel.
Writer’s Voice — in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Rate us on iTunes or whatever podcast app you use!
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We talk with Jenny Offill about her acclaimed cli-fi novel, Weather. Then, Ben Ehrenreich tells us about Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time.
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We talk with Rebecca Sacks about her powerful debut novel, City of a Thousand Gates. It’s about the intersecting stories of the peoples of Israel and Palestine, and how oppression twists and informs the humanity of perpetrators and victims.
Then, we replay our 2016 interview with Palestinian-American novelist Susan Abulhawa about her second novel, The Blue Between Sky and Water.
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We talk with Victoria Bond, co-author of Zora and Me, a terrific middle grades trilogy of novels about Zora Neale Hurston, about the last in the series, Zora and Me: The Summoner.
Then, we talk with ninety year-old Irene Butter about her spellbinding memoir of living through the Nazi Holocaust, Shores Beyond Shores.
Finally, we recommend a novel by Ellen Cooney as a gift for the Holidays or for reading any time.