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We talk with Paul Pitcoff about his memoir, Cold War Secrets. It’s about growing up in leftwing circles in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s with a father who had a hidden past.
Then, a woman is raped and finds a path toward healing by examining the objects associated with her trauma. We talk with Laura Levitt about her memoir, The Objects That Remain.
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We spend the hour talking with Hugh Raffles about his new book, The Book Of Unconformities: Speculations On Lost Time. It’s part natural history, part memoir, part meditation on the relationships between people and rocks throughout time.
Then, at the end, a short story about the Cure Hunter from Francesca’s book Province of the Heart.
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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.
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We talk with Les Leopold about his Uncle Walter’s remarkable diary of life as Jew in Nazi Germany, Defiant German—Defiant Jew: A Holocaust Memoir from Inside the Third Reich. Les Leopold had the diary translated and has added much context and commentary to the book.
Then, we talk with acclaimed crime novelist Anthony Horowitz about his newest murder mystery confection, Moonflower Murders. It’s the second in the Susan Ryeland series, following Magpie Murders.
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We talk with Margot Livesy. Her new novel, The Boy In The Field, explores the limits of free will and how we respond to what happens to us.
Then, an emergency room doctor evaluates the lessons of 25 years in emergency medicine and their relevance to life and writing. We talk with Frank Huyler about his memoir, White Hot Light: Twenty-Five Years in Emergency Medicine. We also ask him what it’s like to be an ER doc in the midst of covid.
Finally, we talk with writer and English professor K.L. Cook about opening up the campus to in-person learning in the midst of the covid19 pandemic.
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We talk with filmmaker Barry Sonnenfeld about his memoir, Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother.
Then Katy Simpson Smith tells us about her new novel of historical fiction, The Everlasting. It’s a quadruple love story spanning two millennia.
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We talk with Rory MacLean about his new book, Pravda Ha-Ha: True Travels to the End of Europe. MacLean travels from Russia and the former Soviet Union states to uncover what has happened since the Fall of the USSR thirty years ago.
Then, the COVID19 pandemic has crashed the world oil market. That might be a good thing for US consumers, but could it be causing a global food crisis? We talk with defense correspondent for the Nation, Michael Klare. He tells us about his latest article for the Nation: Covid-19’s Third Shock Wave: The Global Food Crisis.
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We talk with Helen Fremont about her stunning new memoir, The Escape Artist. It’s about the toxic influence of closely held secrets on the glue that should hold families together — and about how trauma echoes down the generations.
Then, Bernie Sanders ended his presidential run this week, leaving Joe Biden the only remaining candidate in the race. We air an interview we did last week with Branko Marcetic about how the Democratic Party is handling allegations of sexual assault against Biden. (It was also published on the WV website as a Web Only Extra.)
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We talk with Alyss Thomas about her guide to journaling: The Journal Writer’s Companion. Then, we check in with Thomas’ brother Gareth St. John Thomas about his terrific guide to learning and writing about a family member’s history. It’s called Finding True Connections.
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On the menu this week are two books, both with roots in South Asia and America, touching on two of the most central issues of our time: climate and immigration.
We talk first with acclaimed novelist and writer Amitav Ghosh about his newest work of fiction, Gun Island. Then, NPR-correspondent Aarti Shahani tells us about her stunning memoir of immigration to America — the dream and the nightmare. It’s called Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares. Continue reading
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We talk with Jayson Greene about his memoir of losing his two year old daughter to a freak accident, Once More We Saw Stars.
Then, we talk with writer Mitchell S. Jackson about his memoir of growing up in an African-American community in Portland Oregon, Survival Math.
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We talk with playwright and author Octavio Solis about growing up the son of Mexican migrants in El Paso Texas. His book of stories based on that history is Retablos: Stories from a Life Lived Along the Border. We also talk about the August 3 mass shooting in El Paso and the impact it has had on Solis’ hometown.
Then, we re-air our 2018 interview with singer-songwriter Don Arbor about his song honoring immigrants, “Everyone Comes From Somewhere”. Continue reading
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We talk with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and writer Gregory Pardlo about his searing family memoir, AIR TRAFFIC: A Memoir of Ambition & Manhood in America (Knopf, April 2019).
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Today’s episode features two books that explore therapy from both sides of the couch. We talk with Lori Gottlieb about her bestselling memoir, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed.
Then, a novel about a therapist who finds herself crossing dangerous lines with a patient while struggling with her own grief: we talk with Bev Thomas about her debut novel, A Good Enough Mother. A breakout sensation in the UK, it was just published in the US.
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We talk with Nora Krug about her memoir exploring her family’s history during Nazi Germany, Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home.
Then, when her daughter got into college in Manhattan, celebrated New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast wanted to give her a guide to getting around in the city. We talk with Chast about the graphic book that came out of that guide. It’s called Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York.