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Louise Adler has been one of the biggest and most controversial names in Australian publishing for decades. This is the story of how she fell in love with the world of books.An asthmatic child, she spent most of Melbourne's winters in bed with nothing else to do but read novels.But it wasn't until her parents intervened in Louise's obsession with Enid Blyton's boarding school series that her deep pleasure in the world of books began in earnest.Shaped by her family's story of surviving World War Two, Louise grew up in questioning everything.She was 15 years old when she went to her first Vietnam moratorium and was locked up for her role in the protests.She travelled to Israel at the age of 17, which was a transformative experience for her.Back in Australia, Louise began her career in publishing, backing some unconventional and headline-grabbing authors from Tony Abbott and Mark Latham to Louise Milligan and Mick Gatto.Louise was Director of Adelaide Writers' Week from 2023, until the dramatic collapse of the 2026 festival.This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris. Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison. It was recorded live at the Byron Writers Festival.It explores writing, writers, books, Australian literature, Randa Abdel-Fattah, Israel, Palestine, Anti-Semitism commission, Judaism, WWII, Holocaust survivors, Adelaide Writers Festival, Byron Writers Festival, freedom of speech, Australian literary scene, origin story, Auspol, politics, big ideas, memoir, love, marriage, safe spaces, Grace Tame.
I'm very excited to bring you this week's BEHIND THE LENS Radio Show and my exclusive conversation with director BEN GREGOR talking about THE MAGIC FARAWAY TREE, a film, like the book on which it's based, that keeps the child inside of us alive with fun and fantasy and good storytelling that speaks to family, imagination, and risk that is a shared language to us all. I've been under embargo on this one until today, and I'm so happy I can bring you this fun and interesting interview. Adapted from Enid Blyton's beloved classic novel THE MAGIC FARAWAY TREE, the film centers on Polly, Tim, and their three children – Fran, Beth, and Joe – a modern family forced to relocate to the remote and rustic English countryside due to financial difficulties. As they adapt to their new lives with no electricity and no wifi and none of the modern conveniences they were used to, the children discover a magical tree and its extraordinary and eccentric residents, including treasured characters Moonface, Silky, Dame Washalot, Saucepan Man, Mr. Watzisname and Oom Boom Boom. At the top of the tree, they are transported to spectacular, fantastical lands like the Land of Goodies, the Land of Birthdays, the Land of Back to Front, the Land of Knowalls, and through the joys and challenges of their adventures, the family learns to reconnect and value each other for the first time in years. Directed by Ben Gregor and written by Simon Farnaby based on Enid Blyton's novel of the same name, THE MAGIC FARAWAY TREE stars Andrew Garfield, Claire Foy, Nonso Anozie, Nicola Coughlan, Jessica Gunning, Jennifer Saunders, Rebecca Ferguson, Dustin Demri-Burns, Oliver Chris, Mark Heap, and more. The real magic and wonder and fun of THE MAGIC FARAWAY TREE comes courtesy of the incredible crafts artisans who bring the worlds of THE MAGIC FARAWAY TREE to life – cinematographer Zac Nicholson, editor Gary Dollner, production designer Alexandra Walker, art directors Janet Harwood, Hannah Moseley and Jo Riddell, composer Isabella Summers, and costume designer Ann Maskrey whose work here is truly award-worthy. http://eliasentertainmentnetwork.com
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“What used to be called advertising was the most creative job I could find — this idea of going where I could have my hands on some of the levers of creativity was really compelling. So what if it was soap?”Jeff Norton is an award-winning author and television executive producer with a focus on turning books into global media. Jeff is currently showrunner and executive producer of Finding Her Edge, the figure-skating drama he created for Netflix and WildBrain. It reached the Netflix Top 10 in more than 80 countries and was renewed for a second season less than two weeks after it premiered. Jeff is also the originating executive producer behind Netflix's Geek Girl, now filming its second season, and has produced adaptations ranging from Susan Hill's The Small Hand to the picture-book series Trucktown. Earlier, Jeff founded Lean Forward Media, consulted for The Jim Henson Company, and served as a Senior Vice President at Chorion, where he managed the literary estates of Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie. Jeff began his career at P&G as a marketing executive, where he helped launch Febreze as a category-creating brand. Jeff studied film and commerce at Queen's University and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School. He's also a prolific author in his own right, with more than a dozen books to his name. A dual Canadian-British citizen, he's based in Burlington, Ontario.This conversation is hosted by podcast co-founder and P&G Alum Drew Tarvin, Founder & CEO of Humor That Works. Drew spent six years at P&G leading IT + brand initiatives before turning his background in engineering, improv, and stand-up comedy into a career helping organizations use humor to improve leadership, communication, and workplace culture. He's the author of Humor That Works and his TEDx talk has been viewed more than 16 million times.
... but is she a Legitimate Like? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Enid Blyton mal wieder zu Gast im Empire unserer zwei Actionfiguren Magister Felix Scharlau und Umschuler Linus Volkmann. Wir besprechen die "legendäre" (Quelle Felix Scharlau) "Geheimnis um"-Reihe der englischen Autorin. Hier stimmt einfach alles. Also außer mit dem Hörspiel und diesem Podcast.
En el episodio de hoy hablamos de cómo afecta la corrupción a los votantes europeos, a raíz de un estudio de la Comisión Europea. Hablamos también de la polémica que rodea a Los cinco, la famosa saga literaria de Enid Blyton. En las pistas culturales: la novela alemana August, la película francesa Asesinato en la 3 planta y el estreno en plataformas de Arco.
Best known as the co-founder of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian is now turning his focus to the future of women's sport. Once overlooked and underfunded, it is now undergoing rapid change. Alexis is today announcing he's bringing his all-female track and field meet series, Athlos, to London. He tells Anita Rani why, and talks about being married to one of the most successful and well known sports stars of all time - Serena Williams.Some social media posts relating to menstruation, menopause, fertility and sexual health are being incorrectly flagged as 'adult content', then removed or their visibility limited - a practice described as 'shadow banning'. Charities and health professionals have signed an open letter to Meta - who own Facebook and Instagram - asking for an explanation for what they call the 'hiding' of information about women's health. Anita speaks to the BBC's Shona McCallum, the CEO of gynaecological charity The Eve Appeal Athena Lamnisos, and Tania who has personally experienced the benefit of this sort of content.The Emma Rice Company's theatre show adaptation of Enid Blyton's 1940s boarding school books, Malory Towers, is touring the UK. It's the brainchild of the company's director, Emma Rice, formerly artistic director at Shakespeare's Globe in London. And it comes in the same year that Blyton's series celebrates its 80th anniversary. Emma joins Anita.Margo Oakley tells Anita about her experience on the current series of the BBC TV show Race Across The World, making it to the final, and the incredible feedback she's had from audiences on her combination of optimism and vulnerability. She talks about grieving the loss of her sister Julia and coming together with her brother-in-law for this mammoth challenge.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Sarah Crawley
Wir kommen aus dem Feiern nicht heraus: Diese Folgen nehmen wir am Cinco de Mayo auf. Wer oder was da gefeiert wird? Off-Topic-Hörer wissen mehr. Und sie haben trotzdem noch Fragen, die wir wie immer ausgiebig beantworten. Jürgen verrät außerdem, wie oft er sich das „Robin Hood“-Hörspiel von Europa gegeben hat, während Roland Post aus dem Buckingham Palace bekommen hat. Aus England kommt bekanntlich auch Enid Blyton, deren „Abenteuer“-Box tatsächlich in Deutschland am günstigsten zu haben ist. Der bislang leichteste Omnibus ist hingegen in den USA erschienen: Mike Grells „The Warlord Vol. 1“, in dem US-Pilot Travis Morgan bei einem Absturz am Polarkreis in einer ganz anderen Welt landet. Eine so schräge Story lässt sich nur noch mit einem Pink-Floyd-Diorama aus Nicht-Lego-Klemmbausteinen toppen. Jubel nicht nur bei Jürgen: Die Platin-Trophäe von „Astro Bot“ ist im Kasten. Nun hat er Zeit für, hüstel, Recherchen zu AIVR und ihren „Girlfriend“-Produkten. Roland meldet Platin in „Unpacking“ und „Cat Quest 1“ und hat sich wie Jürgen in „The Division: Resurgance“ New York auf dem Smartphone angeschaut. Einen deutlich besseren Ausflug machte er ebenfalls: Es ging auf einen Road Trip nach Südkalifornien – zum Final Fantasy 14 Fan Fest. Dort traf er japanische Entwickler, erfreulich spielbegeisterte PR-Manager und Kollegen aus ganz Europa. Klar, dass er ausführlich über seine Abenteuer in und um Anaheim berichtet. Jürgen hat es „nur“ zur Stay Forever Live geschafft, dort aber Boris Schneider-Johne getroffen und am größten Flipper der Welt gespielt. Kein Wunder, dass wir auch ohne Filmbesprechung die vier Stunden nur knapp verpassen. (Aufgenommen am 5. Mai 2026)
Tracy Eire grew up far to the north in a place called St John's, Newfoundland. She has spent most of her life with one foot in the real world and the other somewhere else—maybe on Mercury, maybe in the realm of myth, or ... somewhere near Hobbiton. It's a place where stories breathe, where the old gods whisper, and where women step out of the fog wearing their strength and brilliance plainly. That is the space her art comes from. An oil and charcoal artist with a deep love for narrative painting, Tracy focuses on portraits of women who feel ancient and modern all at once. These are figures who carry storms behind their eyes, but choose the light anyway. She often paints the things she sought—or witnessed—in her youth: courage, grace, grit, and the quiet power of women who refused to disappear, even when maligned. It's no wonder her harpies wear couture. Tracy honed her skills through the Milan Art Mastery Program, but she's been creating art even longer than she's been reading comic books and novels. She is also a longtime writer of NobleBright fantasy, science fiction, and paranormal tales, and those worlds bleed into her canvases in the form of ghost hunters, fairies, sirens, and banshees like you've never seen before. Every piece she makes becomes a conversation between the storyteller and the painter in her. Sometimes those two voices argue, but ... mostly they cooperate. In every part, she's busy becoming an accomplished storyteller. What Tracy wants when she paints (and hopes for when she writes) is that her work makes people feel something strong and true. Maybe it's a spark of recognition. Maybe it's the sudden sense that someone out there sees your resilience, your mythos, your story. Her work is tied to the belief that compassion is just as legitimate a curveball as cruelty, and that good can prevail over despair. Perhaps that's because her art is built on legends, imagination, and memory—on women who didn't give up, and the enduring truth that courage still matters. Whether you meet Tracy's work on paper, on canvas, or in a book, the promise inside it is the same: she will always try to make something that speaks to you, and something that lights your way onward. Dorothy de Kok skims author bios with mild suspicion—aware they matter, but quietly convinced they are proof that even the greatest writers have writer's block when they have to write about themselves … and here we are. Her own storytelling journey began at twelve, when she attempted her first novel: an earnest and spectacularly terrible fan fiction of Enid Blyton's Magic Faraway Tree series. She finished it, reread it proudly, then lost it, which is just as well, as it was a threat to great literature. Since then, Dorothy has collected an unusually broad résumé: high school English teacher, academic editor, safe-house director, real estate agent, and hopeful but horrendous gardener. She has spent years listening to people's stories—students, clients, and survivors—and those voices sometimes find their way into her fiction. She now lives in the small Karoo village of Bedford, South Africa, where the power supply is erratic and the potholes are legislated, and where inspiration tends to wander in before the first morning screech of the hadeda. She is also, by her own admission, unofficially blacklisted from owning a library card in several provinces due to her unfortunate habit of becoming emotionally attached to borrowed books and “forgetting” to return them. “Thickly,” her Writers of the Future entry, explores what happens when the desire to be seen becomes literal—a body horror tale about enhancement, erasure, and the price of visibility in a world that demands women transform United Public Radio & UFO Paranormal Radio www.uprntalkradio.com
Feministični filmski festival FeFi je v zadnjih letih vzpostavil platformo za premislek o vlogi žensk v filmu – ne le kot ustvarjalk, temveč tudi kot nosilk zgodb, pogledov in estetik, ki so bile v zgodovini pogosto potisnjene na rob. V Slovenski kinoteki se bo naslednji teden odvil cikel Obzorja skupnega: spominsko delo in postjugoslovanski film, ki je nastal v sodelovanju s Fakulteto za družbene vede in sicer v okviru raziskovalnega projekta MEMPOP. Ocenjujemo filma Zemljo krast, novi igrani celovečerec ustvarjalnega tandema režiserja Žige Virca in scenaristke Ize Strehar, ter Čarobno drevo, britanski mladinski fantazijski film režiserja Bena Gregorja, ki je nastal po znameniti seriji knjig Enid Blyton.
A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Tonight on APEX Express, join the Powerleegirls Host Miko Lee speaks with children's book authors Lorraine Nam, Uma Krishnaswami and Maggie Tokuda-Hall about Library Joy in honor of National School Library Month! To Learn More Lorrraine Nam, illustrator and author Michael Threet's book: I'm So Happy You're Here: A Celebration of Library Joy Uma Krishnaswami Her books: Book Uncle Triology Maggie Tokuda-Hall Her book: Love in the Library Every Library Authors Against Book Bans Show Transcript [00:00:00] Opening: Apex Express Asian Pacific expression. Community and cultural coverage, music and calendar, new visions and voices, coming to you with an Asian Pacific Islander point of view. It's time to get on board the Apex Express. [00:00:35] Ayame Keane-Lee: Welcome to tonight's episode of Apex Express Celebrating Library Joy. I'm Ayame Keane-Lee the editor of tonight's show, and part of the PowerLeeGirls bringing you the introduction to tonight's show. Did you know that April is National School Library Month and in just 10 days from April 19th to 25th is National Library Week? The theme for this year's National Library Week is Find Your Joy with Honorary Chair Mychal Threets. The first of three interviews you'll hear my mom, Miko Lee have tonight is with Lorraine Nam the illustrator for the newly released children's book written by that very Mychal Threets called, “I'm So Happy You're Here”. You will then hear Miko speak with Uma Krishnaswami about her children's book “Book Uncle and Me,” and lastly with Maggie Tokuda-Hall about her children's book, “Love in the Library,” and the important work of Authors Against Book Bans. As a library kid and current library worker, I have experienced firsthand the transformative power of library access and the importance of inclusive and diverse storytelling. In and out of schools, libraries are vital to nurturing and uplifting the autonomy and sovereignty of children, which always has and continues to be a liberatory practice. We hope tonight's show will inspire you right into your local library to check out some of the great books mentioned here or to put them on hold. Let's listen in. [00:02:06] Miko Lee: Welcome, Lorraine Nam, illustrator of amazing children's books. Welcome to Apex Express. [00:02:13] Lorraine Nam: I'm excited to be here. [00:02:16] Miko Lee: I wanna start with a question I ask all of my guests, which is, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you? [00:02:24] Lorraine Nam: Who are my people? I would say creative people. People who are interested in having an open mind, and looking at the bright side of things, the beautiful things, people who are curious. The type of legacy that I bring I think is just my parents who are creative and then bringing that, to this new generation. [00:02:57] Miko Lee: Thank you for sharing. I am, I'm looking at your beautiful face, and behind you is this, find your joy and, and it's in lots of colors on this pink banner and in at the top we see opening up of a library door with Mychal Threets, who's the author of this book, “I'm So Happy You're Here: A Celebration of Library Joy.” I'm wondering if you can talk about your collaborative process with Mychal Threets. [00:03:25] Lorraine Nam: The first impression that you have of writer and illustrator for a picture book is that they work really closely together, and that's actually not the case. We work pretty separately, but I was very excited. Mychal wrote the words to this book and they were looking for an illustrator and my agent called me and she asked me if I was interested. I was very excited about the project. I signed up for it and we worked pretty separately. We connected on Instagram, but he pretty much had no art notes, everything was pretty much whatever I was open to. Then we met for the first time and we got our very first copy of the book and we met in New York. [00:04:10] Miko Lee: And what was that like? [00:04:12] Lorraine Nam: Um, amazing. He is exactly who he is in his videos. [00:04:18] Miko Lee: Can you share for our audience who he is and a little bit more about him, just in case folks don't know. [00:04:24] Lorraine Nam: The book calls him a librarian ambassador. He describes himself as a reader, a lover of librarians or the number one fan of libraries. This is his first book and he's also the host of Reading Rainbow on PBS. We met at the New York Library, public Library for the first time, and he's just so nice, very kind. Honestly, it felt like we already knew each other just because we had been talking through the publisher about the book. [00:05:02] Miko Lee: Thank you for sharing. It's so beautifully illustrated and you have a incredibly diverse,, amount of people in the book, both racially but also physically, and I really appreciate how you encapsulated that. I'm just wondering what inspired you to develop this specific imagery for this book? [00:05:22] Lorraine Nam: Yeah, so one of the only stipulations in the art notes was that he wanted to have a diverse group of people attending the library. People of all ages of all color, all sizes, all disabilities. That seemed like a no brainer to me because I just know the message that he puts into the world. The only difficult part was narrowing down the cast. There's all these different types of people and just trying to figure out who to focus on. I wanted to make sure that you still see the same group of kids over and over. So it felt like you were following the along throughout the day, while still having lots of diversity and lots of different types of people. [00:06:11] Miko Lee: Had you set what the cover was gonna be at the beginning or did that come after you had already finished the whole book? [00:06:19] Lorraine Nam: Oh, that came much later. We pretty much had the art for the interior nailed down, and then we were working on concepts for the cover. I knew from Mychal's social media presence that maybe he didn't want to be the poster cover of the book. He wanted to be about the library goers and the people rather than himself. And so I was kind of towing that line of like obviously people wanna see him, it's his first book. They're such huge fans, and so like how much to put Mychal in and how much to showcase him, as well as showcase like all the other people who go to the library. [00:07:02] Miko Lee: He definitely does have a joyous kind of ebullient vibe to him. I recommend for audience to check out his socials because he has this, you wanna listen to him. He's so inviting and I love the poster behind you because he is saying, like, “welcome, come into the library. This is my world.” And you also made him look so cute. Really looks like a cartoon version of him. So sweet. In your artistic process, I'm wondering what helps you define the style of art you utilize? I'm thinking about the paper cutouts that you did for a tale of two princes. What is it about the work that inspires you to select that type of style? [00:07:43] Lorraine Nam: I actually had a very winding path to the style that I have today. So the style that I have today is very much layered. It's painted, a lot of it is painted. And then I cut it out and then I glue and collage different elements, and then I scan everything in and enhance certain aspects through Photoshop. But a lot of it started actually in wanting to make a physical book. So it was with book binding and then with book binding, because that's just a technique to produce a product, it was what goes in those pages and that's when I started doing cut paper. So just silhouetted, cut paper. And I was doing that for a long time, just cutting out rice paper to make silhouettes. I wanted to tell more of the story and depict people. So then I started making paper cut [laughs] sets. So I would build —almost like Legos— a whole set of paper buildings and paper people and paper objects that are three dimensional. And then I would photograph them. And then from there, I landed in this more 2D, but playing with still technique and texture and layers. [00:09:10] Miko Lee: Wow, that's so interesting. Can you share a little bit more about your artistic process? Do you start at a certain time of day? Do you only work at night? Do you have a whole studio set up? [00:09:20] Lorraine Nam: well, For the book projects because there's such a timeline to 'em and they're very specific. I'll do very loose sketches on Post-it notes. They're readily available and then you can stick two of them next to each other to make a full spread. I use these post-its, and then I would just fold them in half and use that as like very quick pencil drawings. And then if I had something that I liked, I would just go in and pen. But they were still very small. So it was more about looking at silhouettes and composition. And then I would print, it's a very old school technique, but I would print out all the text for the book and cut 'em out. And double sided tape and just stick them on to see where the text should be on the page and where it could fit. I would just do that manually until I had something that I liked a little bit more. Then I would start creating digital, like line drawings. [00:10:21] Miko Lee: And are you lining this all up on a wall or putting it on the desk? [00:10:26] Lorraine Nam: Um, so they're in like a notebook. [00:10:29] Miko Lee: Oh, you put 'em in book format? [00:10:31] Lorraine Nam: It's all the spread. So it should take about two pages basically. You should be able to look at it and look at it from like an eagle eye perspective of what the entire book will look like and what the flow will be like, and if there's closeups or this is like a far away saying, you get more of the like, setting of the library. [00:10:52] Miko Lee: And with the font printed out really small so that it's on the bottom of that Post-it note. [00:10:56] Lorraine Nam: Mm-hmm. [00:10:57] Miko Lee: Wow, that is so fascinating. And what is it when you're eagle eye-ing, what are you looking for? [00:11:04] Lorraine Nam: I'm pretending that I'm a kid looking at a book for the first time, with zero context and maybe zero reading level skill and just looking at the pictures and seeing if I can spot the same character and if there is a story that follows along, because this is a library book where it doesn't talk about specific people. I wanted to be able to follow each character in the book and see what their day was like in the library. So when they first came into the library, what they were doing during the day, what friends they made, and then maybe them leaving or, you know, a resolution of some kind, like their parents are checking out symbols at the library. [00:11:52] Miko Lee: the concept of having the character go throughout the book. Was that in the instruction or was something that you created. [00:11:59] Lorraine Nam: That was something that I wanted. Because I know looking at picture books, the pictures can also tell a story where, the words, it might not be in the words. So I wanted there to be more of a layered storytelling through image. [00:12:18] Miko Lee: I appreciate that as a mom. I remember when my girls were little, they would always say, where is that rabbit on the page? Or where is that thing? And so being able to track a character all the way through, is quite delightful. It adds another dimension for the multiple readings. You mentioned before about how you didn't really meet Mychal, the author of the book until the very end, and I guess that's common as an illustrator and you've worked with so many different experts in their fields from, physicist Neil Degrasse Tyson to Skater Nathan Chen. How is their very different fields, how does that impact your art making? [00:12:57] Lorraine Nam: It's actually the most fun. It's what drew me to illustration in the first place. I love being able to do like a deep dive and a specific subject that I wouldn't necessarily have gravitated towards and do that research. I actually do go to the library. I start the process at the library and I look at all the books about that particular topic, and then see what other people have done. And so working on the book for Neil deGrasse Tyson, it was so much fun looking at different how space is depicted the idea of galaxies and making that tangible and real for kids. And then for Nathan Chen, I was already a fan before I got the project, so it was very easy. But watching the videos, seeing all the different techniques and for his book it was more looking at sports books. Because he's such a unique person in his specific field in figure skating that there weren't very many books on figure skating and most are of a female portrayal. I was looking more at sports and how people show different types of movement, , and show like form. And the more technical aspects that are very, very, very specific and very critical to those things. [00:14:32] Miko Lee: And how did that manifest into your book? [00:14:35] Lorraine Nam: Um, a lot of drawings of like, the breakdown of his jumps and trying to figure out can a child do this jump [laughs]? And also doing a lot of research 'cause he's a very private person. His book is not about him, it's not a biography, but it's also loosely based off of him. You know, I have two other siblings. If I had a book based off of me, I want my siblings to be involved and represented in that as well. So I included his family, even though they're not a huge part of the book, his siblings are not like big characters. But they're still represented in there. So he can still be like, oh that's my family. This is based off of my story. [00:15:32] Miko Lee: So when you're doing these approaches, like including Nathan's family or in the library book, making sure characters go all the way through, is that something you have to check in with the writer about, to see if they're okay? Or is that something that you just do and then you submit and you see if they like it? [00:15:50] Lorraine Nam: That's something that I do, that I find joy in and see. Usually the first eyes on my sketches are the publisher and the art director. And I actually have no idea what, at what stage they really share the sketches, if it's like at a more finalized stage or if it's an early on one, but I usually just go with my own ideas and see what they think about it. [00:16:20] Miko Lee: Wow. I didn't know that you could have that much say into it. That's lovely. You talked a little bit about using the library for research. Gosh, I imagine that Neil deGrasse Tyson, there's so much research on it, that must have been a deep dive. I'm wondering what the library meant to you as a child. [00:16:38] Lorraine Nam: Yeah. I grew up as a big reader. The library for me it was a magical space that I wasn't really sure what it was. My parents, because they grew up in Korea and moved here to the States, there was a big language barrier between us and they're also very not talkative people. They just took us to this place one day and it was our local public library and it was right before closing and we were able to check out as many books as we wanted in whatever type of book that we wanted. I felt like that was magical, that there was no limit to it. [00:17:19] Miko Lee: My last question is, what are you working on now? [00:17:22] Lorraine Nam: I'm working on a few books, actually. I'm juggling a few, but they're all very fun and different. I'm doing a book about a boy dreaming of flying, being a pilot. So I think that will be a really fun imaginative book. [00:17:43] Miko Lee: What is one of your books that you would've liked to read to your younger self? [00:17:50] Lorraine Nam: Mm, I probably Wei Skates On, the book with Nathan Chen. ‘Cause his story is about overcoming obstacles and being disappointed. And just feeling frustrated and upset. And I feel like that's an important lesson even in adulthood. It's not really resolved through words. It's more of like the, everyone is there for him, his family is there for him, and they all just want him to enjoy what he's doing and to not care about winning or losing. [00:18:33] Miko Lee: Lorraine Nam, thank you so much for chatting with us about your work and about the library as a magical place, appreciate talking with you. [00:18:42] Lorraine Nam: Thank you so much. I had so much fun talking with you. [00:18:45] Miko Lee: Welcome, amazing award-winning children's book author Uma Krishnaswami, I'm so happy to have you here on Apex Express. [00:18:54] Uma Krishnaswami: Miko, it's my pleasure to be here. [00:18:57] Miko Lee: I wanted to start with a question I ask all of my guests, which is, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you? [00:19:05] Uma Krishnaswami: What a wonderful question. Who are my people? My people are children who are, my ideal readership is the eight to 12-year-old group. I write for children. I'm not particularly thinking about audience when I begin writing. But at some point I want my readership to feel validated, whether they recognize themselves as being in my stories or my stories are offering them a window into a world that they are not immediately familiar with. So I would say those are my people. [00:19:45] Miko Lee: And what is the legacy that you carry with you? [00:19:48] Uma Krishnaswami: I grew up in India. The year that I was born India had been independent for all of nine years. So I carry very much that colonial legacy. I also am an immigrant to two countries, early in my adulthood to the United States and about 12 years ago to Canada. So my legacy is one of moving and finding new roots, finding community. Those are the things that I try to carry forward in my stories. When I began writing, I lived in the US and I started writing when my son was born. So there I was with a little brown baby and I went looking for books that would represent him and I didn't find them. And I think that is what made me think in my early thirties that, real life people could write children's books because of course the books I had read as a child were all written by people from England and many of them were dead. I kind of thought you had to be dead and British to be a writer. So yeah, it's complicated, isn't it? All of that works into, what you think of as, as your legacy. Having done this for 30 plus years now. [00:21:03] Miko Lee: And you've written so many beautiful books. Tell us about a little bit more about that first book. [00:21:09] Uma Krishnaswami: So the very first book, it was called Stories of the Flood. I realized very quickly that I didn't really know what I was doing. I looked to folk tales and traditional tales as a way to teach me about story. My second book called The Broken Tusk Stories of the Hindu God Ganesha. That is the one that I consider as the book that taught me how to write. I had a wonderful editor [unintelligble] Thorpe at a small press in Connecticut, Linnet Books. She told me to lean into story and to see myself as a storyteller. In a way, every book I've written has taught me how to write. [00:21:47] Miko Lee: Can you tell us about your favorite book as a kid? [00:21:52] Uma Krishnaswami: My favorite book as a kid, it would have to be Winnie The Pooh. [00:21:58] Miko Lee: And what was it about Winnie the Pooh that enamored you? [00:22:01] Uma Krishnaswami: I came to it very early and aunt had traveled to England and she brought me my copy of winnie the Pooh in the House of Poo Corner. And I read them, sitting in very Indian gardens, sometimes up in trees. I spent lots of time up in trees and I took my own geography and placed it over the geography of the book. , So that for me, the a hundred acre wood had lime trees and banyan trees and possibly mango trees. It didn't occur to me, until much later when I read an Enid Blyton reader. I had my moment of disillusionment with Enid Blyton and that's when it really occurred to me that there was an us and a them in, in some of the storytelling I was consuming. [00:22:49] Miko Lee: What age was that where you recognized that? [00:22:51] Uma Krishnaswami: My post-colonial moment? [00:22:53] Miko Lee: Yes. [00:22:54] Uma Krishnaswami: I might have been a 11. [00:22:56] Miko Lee: Oh, wow. And were you still living in India at that time? [00:22:59] Uma Krishnaswami: Yeah, yeah. 11 was a very formative year for me. My grandfather passed away, so it sort of brought mortality , into the framework for me. Also that was my year of disillusionment with Blyton. 'cause I read The , river of Adventure. And the villain in it had my name. He was called. Uma, Raya or Raya Uma or something like that. And yeah, I was just shocked. Just totally shocked. It was pure coincidence, I'm sure. She probably just, pulled the name out of the air and plunked it in. But. I began to notice that he was described as dark skinned and he was described as cunning. All this language that had slid right past me before began to be apparent. So, yeah, [00:23:47] Miko Lee: I love that. That is so amazing. This name, like what? That's my name as the villain. [00:23:53] Uma Krishnaswami: I'm the Bad Guy. No, I'm not. [00:23:56] Miko Lee: And all of your books are such a wonderful clap back to that because you have a multitude of characters and so many different worlds. Initially reached out to you because I started reading book Uncle this trilogy of books that are so lovely. Can you first share a little bit about what the Book Uncle's Trilogy is about. [00:24:16] Uma Krishnaswami: Okay, so it didn't start out as a trilogy. It didn't even start out as a book. It started out as a short story and then it didn't quite fit. It wasn't a picture book. It seemed to have more layers than that, so it kind of grew. But what started Book Uncle and Me was I was visiting my parents in India. At the time, and I was on this very busy urban street and there was this kid sitting on this on the, on the sidewalk. Um, it was kind of a broken brick sidewalk, and she was sitting cross-legged right in the middle and she was reading book and she was just oblivious to the crowd going around her and the. Buses on the road and there were, you know, random goats and dogs running around and she just was ignoring everything and she was absorbed in her book. And I remembered that I had been that kind of reader as a child. There was an election going on at the time as well, and I thought, I wonder what would happen if I put those two things together. And that is how Book Uncle came to be. [00:25:14] Miko Lee: And then there was just, you wanted to live in those characters more, so you ended up writing additional books? [00:25:20] Uma Krishnaswami: Hmm and that's a very good question. And actually no, I didn't, I thought I was done. I wrote Book Uncle and Me back in, I'm say 2009, 2010, something like that. I probably started it in 2010. Um, it got published originally in India in 2012, I believe. And then it was picked up by Ground Wood in Canada and published in Canada and the US so North American edition in 2016. And I thought, you know, I'm done. I'm writing other things. And then come the pandemic and we're all in lockdown. And like a lot of writers, I was doing, um, many, many, virtual. Presentations and programs. Um, and I did something through the North Vancouver Public Library and, there were kids zooming in from, you know, some from home, some from their bubbles, some from classrooms, whatever. And we were talking about book uncle and one of the kids, I think in third grade maybe, she said, Are you gonna write a sequel? And I am just joshing, right? I am. I said, yeah, should I? And they're all going, yeah, you should. And you should write three because you've got three characters you should give them each a [story]. And I'm like, all right guys i'll think about it. I absolutely will but not really taking it seriously. And then as often happens. the session ended and, you know, there we were all in lockdown going nowhere. And I thought maybe, maybe there's something there. Maybe I could return to that. And in a way I was kind of intrigued because I hadn't, had never thought about a trilogy and I was interested in how that would play out. Um, and it was kind of a writing challenge to myself, but honestly, once I started writing Birds on the Brain, which was book two it just kind of, I hesitate to say wrote itself 'cause I, that just seems, you know, so kind of woo woo. But, um, it did, it did. Uh, the, the kid came in and she took over and then a bird flew onto the rooftop and there I was on my way. So that's the story of, of how that that happened. In retrospect, I'm really sorry I didn't ask that child's name because I would've absolutely loved to have acknowledged her in the book. But thank you child from North Vancouver, whoever you are. [00:27:40] Miko Lee: That is so amazing. That's by request, by audience request. You fulfilled this goal of a trilogy and and I I love that they even said, not just a sequel, but a trilogy. [00:27:52] Uma Krishnaswami: Oh, they were. Yeah. They had it. I mean, they had, then they, they figured it out, which was really lovely. [00:27:58] Miko Lee: And those, that trilogy is really geared, as you were saying to the second and third grade audience and I So many of your books are written around kids that can make a difference. What is it about that age that appeals to you and that motivation to show them how they can change the world? [00:28:16] Uma Krishnaswami: I think they have this really, strong sense of what's fair. It's the age at which, you know, you start pushing back against what you see as small unfairnesses in your life. Parental restrictions quite often, or older siblings. You're pushing back. You're doing a little bit of finding who you are. And I think that uh, you begin to get a sense of awareness of the big world outside your small circle. And I think also one of the things that drives me, with writing to this age is that, I feel that it is so unfair that grownups, the adult world, has created so much injustice. And we just kind of expect the next generation to step up and step into it and, and do the best they can. and it just, it doesn't seem right not to at least give them the wherewithal to think about that. And they do, they have children have voices and their voices matter. As we found out with, the climate strikes. I mean it really was young people who brought those messages out into the world and forced us to think about them and talk about them. So, I think that we owe children that. [00:29:34] Miko Lee: So which of your books would you want to read to the second or third grade Uma? [00:29:43] Uma Krishnaswami: [Laughs] Maybe Book Uncle and Me. Because I think there's a lot of second and third grade Uma in that book. I was a compulsive reader like Yasmin. I would've absolutely read a book every day for the rest of my life if I'd had that many books available to me. I didn't. So I read the ones I had over and over again. I lived in an imaginary world, quite a bit of the time. [00:30:06] Miko Lee: Speaking of having access to lots of books, I'm wondering what your relationship was like to libraries, both as a child and then now. [00:30:15] Uma Krishnaswami: I'm a proud and inveterate library goer. I put holds on things. I go browse on shelves. I download eBooks and audio books. I always have a pending list. I'm very, very grateful for libraries and also for librarians whom many of whom I have come to know over my life and am immensely grateful for. I did not have access to libraries much as a child. We didn't have a public library system that was free and available and open to everybody. There were the kind of unofficial lending library types that I feature in Book Uncle and Me. There are sadly fewer of them now, but you still find them on street corners in India. I remember taking a book and giving one and then getting one back in return. That was, that was part of my life in some of the places we lived. [00:31:07] Miko Lee: Did you know an actual book uncle? [00:31:10] Uma Krishnaswami: I didn't actually pay much attention, to the people who handed those books out. I was much more, focused on the books I was getting. There are characters who I've seen who have run these things. I once had somebody email me and say, I'm a book uncle. This is what I do. So that was really nice. [00:31:31] Miko Lee: That's sweet. I wanna roll back and talk a little bit more about your artistic process. I'm wondering if you, as a writer, as illustrator, you can sometimes be in your own world, and I'm wondering what your process is. [00:31:43] Uma Krishnaswami: My place is right here. This is my office room, and I'm standing at a treadmill desk, and usually what I will do, is when I'm writing, I will turn that on very, very slowly. I usually start out at the idea stage with a notebook and a pen. I have fountain pens with very varied colors of ink, and I use those always to write my initial notes and questions about a new story idea. I don't go to the computer and the keyboard until the idea has started showing up quite a few times. In, perhaps in a few iterations, almost as if I'm actually pushing it away at first, you know, saying, don't scratch up my window until you are developed a little bit more. I'm not going to, indulge, the initial shallowness that usually the first idea is often not what it's gonna end up being. I question that, and sometimes this is gonna sound really crazy, but, if I write those questions many times over in different colored inks, the answers begin to break out in clumps. Once I've begun to think, okay, well maybe I, I know what I could do with this. That's when I open up a file. [00:32:56] Miko Lee: Ooh share a little bit more about the different colored inks. How does that work? [00:33:00] Uma Krishnaswami: Um, right over there, there's a whole row of inks, and right over here is a fountain pen, and I have several of them. I change the ink colors, and when I get stuck with something, it really does help to write those questions to myself, in a journal notebook. I have a terrible handwriting, so I used to really worry about when people gave me nice notebooks. Little empty notebooks with beautiful glossy pages. I used to think, God, my writing is so awful. I feel like I'm desecrating this beautiful book. I've gotten over that and it's actually really helpful to physically write that thought for me is very, very useful. [00:33:39] Miko Lee: And when you see the different colors, is it like words that stand out to you, that you piece together? Yeah. [00:33:44] Uma Krishnaswami: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or sometimes I'll write something, in a paragraph, and then I'll break it up and write it in a lineated way, maybe in a different color. You just start seeing things differently when you try different ways of thinking about the same thing. It's all a trick to get the kind of managerial editorial mind out of the way. You need her later, but I don't need her when I'm trying to shape something. [00:34:13] Miko Lee: The, for the creative process. Mm-hmm. The multiple colors just helps [00:34:16] Uma Krishnaswami: Right. [00:34:16] Miko Lee: Pull you into that. [00:34:17] Uma Krishnaswami: Yeah. It just loosens, it loosens my mind up so I don't feel so focused on the objective. I often tell myself, I think Linda Sue Park used to say this. You don't have to write a whole novel. You just write a scene. And so that's what I tell myself, I'm a sceneist. I'm not a novelist. I'm just a sceneist. I write one scene. And that's all I need to write. Then I will write another one and so forth. [00:34:38] Miko Lee: And do you use sticky notes or something to keep those scenes separately or [00:34:42] Uma Krishnaswami: just all kinds of things? I use sticky notes. I use little boards on which I draw plot lines, and then I write, notes to myself. I use the journal notebooks. I've started using Scrivener and I actually have found that helpful but not until I've got something, in enough shape to plug things in. [00:35:01] Miko Lee: Oh, I love hearing about artistic process. That's so fascinating. I appreciate you and you're showing your beautiful pen and everything. It's so great. [00:35:08] Uma Krishnaswami: It's messy, right? One of the things I've learned is to lean into the messiness and not try to organize things too fast, too early. [00:35:16] Miko Lee: Mm-hmm. Giving yourself the time for the creative juices to flow. [00:35:20] Uma Krishnaswami: Yeah. Yeah. [00:35:21] Miko Lee: So my last question is, what are you working on now? [00:35:25] Uma Krishnaswami: I've actually just got done with edits on a picture book, which is going to be called Mango Sun. And then I'm working on another picture book. That's just gone to my agent. It's got to do with wildlife rescue and conservation in the Himalayas. It's an Indian setting, but a very different setting from Mango Sun. [00:35:44] Miko Lee: And most of the ideas from your books are just coming from your imagination or something you read or where are you pulling from to get your inspiration? [00:35:52] Uma Krishnaswami: Everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. I have a picture book that came out of a trip that we took to Galapagos and will it ever take form? I don't know, it's about the rewilding of an island , and how when you bring one species back, the other one follows. Some of it's from my childhood. I have two picture books that came out of a memory of planting a mango seed and watching it grow. [00:36:21] Miko Lee: Sounds lovely. Two of my favorite things, mango and Sun [laughs], appreciate you joining us and sharing about your artistic process and your amazing book. And I'll put a link to your website in our show notes. And thank you so much for joining us and talking to us about Book Uncle and your work. [00:36:37] Uma Krishnaswami: Miko, thank you so much. It's really a delight. [00:36:41] Miko Lee: Welcome, Maggie Tokuda Hall to Apex Express. [00:36:45] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Thank you so much for having me. [00:36:47] Miko Lee: I'm so happy to have you talking about, your wonderful book, love in the Library. But first I wanna, ask you a question I ask my guest, which is, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you? [00:37:01] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Oh man. I feel like I have so many tribes that I identify with in different ways. , Gosh, who are my people? I mean, generally speaking, angry queer teenage girls very much my people. Tired Jewish aunties also my people. Exhausted Asian mothers also my people, [laughs] librarians and book people are my people. I, I, I don't know. I feel like I have so many people that I feel an affinity toward and an affection for, and kinship with. [00:37:38] Miko Lee: I like you naming all of those because we're multifaceted people and there's many different things that make up who we are. Yeah. And what is the legacy that you carry with you from all these tribes you're a part of? [00:37:50] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: From my mother, I carry a legacy of honoring the truth, like really believing that children are owed the truth and that part of being an adult is being courageous enough to tell it. but I also come from like a vibrant family of Jewish storytellers and I feel like I have that, that I carry with me as well. [00:38:17] Miko Lee: Thank you. So you've written the book Love in the Library about Tamma, a woman who works at a library in the Minidoka concentration camp during World War ii. [00:38:28] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Mm-hmm. [00:38:28] Miko Lee: And she meets George and falls in love. Can you tell me about how you very first heard this true love story of your grandparents? [00:38:40] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: I can't actually, I don't remember the first time I heard this story. It is a story that I've just always known. like for me it's very much a fabric of how I came to understand the world and my place in it. Like sky is blue, grandma and grandpa met in a prison camp, you know, normal stuff. And so, um, [00:39:00] Miko Lee: so it's just part of the family lore? [00:39:03] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Yeah. Like, it's not something my mother was ever shy about telling us. And I truly do not remember the first time she talked to me about it because I remember being very small and already feeling like I knew that story. [00:39:15] Miko Lee: Okay. Then how did you decide to turn it into a children's book? [00:39:19] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Yeah, so, in 2017 when President Trump took office for the first time, in his very first executive order was to sign the travel or Muslim ban where he was banning people from Muslim majority countries from coming to the United States. It was clear immediately that he was gonna be using his time and power to enact a white supremacist agenda. I knew I needed to do all the things that we're supposed to do. Like I called my representatives and I wrote my postcards and I marched and I did all those things. But I really did try to audit what I had to offer, particularly children in that moment. That was unique to me. And I realized I had this beautiful story in my own family, not just about the cruelty of those sorts of policies, but also the resilience and power of the people who they target. [00:40:05] Miko Lee: Ooh. Fired up the, that truth teller part of you just became ready to go. [00:40:11] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Yeah. [00:40:11] Miko Lee: Um, speaking of the impact of politics and what's going on and how that relates to books, I know that in April, 2023, Scholastic wanted to include love in the library in a collection around AANHPI folks, but they wanted to edit your amazingly fierce author's note. Can you share with our audience what happened? [00:40:34] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: I mean, first of all, thank you for calling it amazingly fierce. In my author's note, I talk about how what happened to my grandparents wasn't an isolated moment in American history and that it was racist, which I think is a, a reflection of a very basic understanding of that history. It, it's not, a creative extrapolation and. Scholastic offered to license the book, but my licensing offer came with a caveat, which was that I had to remove that entire paragraph. Um, and I had to remove the word racism from the text altogether. And so I decided to say no and say no publicly. And for about three months, my full-time job was talking about Scholastic, but also about our obligation to tell children, American history, honestly. [00:41:19] Miko Lee: And they wanted you to get word of the word racist. Did they say why? [00:41:24] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Yes, they basically said, the language is too strong and we fear that some teachers won't bring it in for fear of this political climate, which is the nice way of saying like, we have to sell into places where book bans are happening and we think that this language is too incendiary for people who would ban books, which to me was always really, Unsatisfactory logic, because books about Japanese American incarceration are banned all the time and they don't use as strident of language as I use in that author's note. baseball saved us, gets banned. They called us, the enemy gets banned. This story is already considered dangerous by the people who would ban books, so they were trying to hold a center that just doesn't exist. [00:42:04] Miko Lee: And so what did you end up doing? [00:42:07] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: I said no and said no publicly, just with like, sort of the hope of, sparking some intra community conversation among kid lit creators about what sort of edits are appropriate to offer people. I would, I still posit, that that's a completely inappropriate edit and that's about sanding down people of color's, history and perspective to cater to a white audience. And I was unwilling to do it. and Scholastic initially released like a very, incomplete apology. And then when they received a lot of pushback about that, they offered a much more full apology. They offered to meet with me and my publisher, the CEO of Scholastic and the head of their education divisions, which is the division that made me this offer. And then they also had me work with a restorative justice consultant, for like a year to try to figure out what they could do better. But what I said to them at the end of that time that I told them, I was extremely transparent that I would be talking about this publicly. So I don't feel bad saying exactly what I said to them here is, I think the exact same thing would've happened. It just would've happened more politely. [00:43:17] Miko Lee: Wow. [00:43:18] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: I don't think that they actually reexamined what their role is as a publisher of Books for Children under Unconsolidated authoritarianism. They just figured out how to ask people to make racist edits more, more, uh, gently. [00:43:33] Miko Lee: And you worked with them for one year with an RJ consultant. [00:43:36] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: I mean, like, not every day, but we had, you know, meetings over the months. And she was a smart lady. Like I don't think that she, you know, did nothing. I think she was trying her best, but I think that, you know, big institutions are very slow to institute cultural change and that that on the one hand has to happen from the top down, but also can't happen from the top down. [00:43:56] Miko Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:43:56] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: And so I genuinely believe that there CEO was trying his hardest to, to make a meaningful change, but without them really stopping and examining and questioning what their own role in this moment is in a critical way. I don't think that they are going to be able to have answered what I would've required for them to, for me to then accept their licensing offer. ‘Cause they made it again. [00:44:25] Miko Lee: So at the end of the one year long, they made the licensing offer to you again? [00:44:29] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Yeah. I think just to be kind, just as like a gesture of like, listen, we know we messed up. We'd love to license your book and I still said no because I don't think that they made meaningful enough change. [00:44:40] Miko Lee: Hmm. Wow. I love this. What did you learn from this experience? [00:44:47] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: That it is very unusual for people to blow the whistle within publishing, even when the examples are egregious. [00:44:54] Miko Lee: Tell me about your connection with Authors Against Book Bans. Did that come out of this experience with Scholastic, or were you involved actively involved in this prior to that? [00:45:05] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: No, it absolutely came as a result of my experience with Scholastic. Authors against Book Bans is an organization that I'm currently the president of. We're over 5,000 book creators across the country who are united under a single point of view, which is that the government shouldn't be allowed to tell us what to read. That's what we believe and that's what we fight for. And I got involved in founding the group along with specifically David Levithan, who's a really wonderful young adult and middle grade author, who had put together most of this group before I even came on board. Cause we realized that authors needed a central place to fight. There was no one organizing specifically us. And so Authors Against Book Bans was born out of necessity and, the dearth of a place that existed for us. Everyone would call on us to come speak, but it was extremely ad hoc. We weren't making any kind of unified movement, even though we all so passionately agree that, you know, book bans are anti-American and in violation of our First Amendment rights. And, you know, the freedom to read is a necessary freedom for a free and democratic society. and the reason I'd reached out to David initially was because I was hoping to put together something like Authors Against Book Bans, but just by myself, which is, maybe a testament more to my own personality [laughs] problems than anything else, but I was like, I'll just figure it out. And he was like, you know, I'm actually assembling a group that's trying to do this. Would you like to be a part of it? And that's how I came aboard. But I had gotten interested in it because as a result of the Scholastic fiasco, I was invited to give the keynote speech at the Idaho Library Association in 2023. I gave my little speech that I'd been giving a lot then, um, about how we have an obligation to tell American history honestly. And, people were like, the reaction was so emotional to it and so profound and like, I thought it was a good speech. I'm proud of the speech, but like it, something else was going on and I could feel it. And I started talking to the people who were there and when these librarians started telling me what they had gone through, just for making books like mine available to children, stalking, harassment, death threats. One of them had been followed home, like really frightening, scary things happening to them on like, in some cases a daily basis. I realized like I was gonna be a part of this fight. That was that. I wasn't gonna let them fight alone. And so, you know, in, in my advocacy work now, Idaho still holds like a very precious place in my heart because I think that it's a very forgotten state. When we think about places that need help, when we think about places that have been gerrymandered, when we think about places where there are so many good people who are disenfranchised and unable to affect meaningful change in their state level, governments. That have just been absolutely run roughshod over by Christian nationalists. We should be thinking about Idaho. They have, I think, like the highest neo-Nazi population in the United States. so it's a very direct line between my grandparents being incarcerated to the activism that I do now. And it wouldn't have happened without Scholastic's offensive offer. [00:48:22] Miko Lee: I did not realize that librarians were personally being assaulted or attacked or followed. For books. [00:48:29] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: You should watch, the librarian's documentary that's now streaming on PBS. Okay. Um, it's common across the country. Amanda Jones, who's an Authors Against Book Bans member no big deal, is a librarian in Louisiana that can't go grocery shopping in her own hometown anymore for fear for her own safety because she has taken a stand to like refuse to remove lgbtq plus books from her school library shelves. It's really dire. And I think people understand objectively that book bans are a problem in our country. I do not think that they understand how violent that this fight is. It's a really dark and hard time to be a librarian. So if you're a person who supports libraries, you should be thanking your librarians and letting them know one-on-one and in person face-to-face that you appreciate the work that they do, because there are people who are making their lives really difficult. [00:49:25] Miko Lee: Can you talk about what the library meant to you as a child? [00:49:30] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: I mean, honestly it was like a part-time babysitter. You're a kid, there's a library. Entertain yourself, you figure it out. I think the first time I really felt like a sense of belonging in the library was in middle school. We moved from LA to Northern California and I had to start a new school in seventh grade. I didn't really know anyone and it was embarrassing to not have people to eat lunch with and things like that. So I would eat lunch in the library. And the librarian was really kind about it. Like she never called attention to it. She never embarrassed me about it. She would let me sneakily eat in there, even though there was a very specific rule that you weren't allowed to eat in the library. she put, the Enchanted Forest Chronicles on an end cap once, and that's how I found them and ended up reading the entire series and that was really when I became a fantasy reader and you know, my debut novel was a fantasy novel. I still feel very much like a fantasy reader kind of at heart, and that started there. I mean, we never know when libraries are going to save a kid's life. [00:50:39] Miko Lee: Can we go back to how you ended up writing this book about your grandparents' experience? Sure. And what was the first spark for you to say, I wanna turn this into something. It's a family lore, but I want more people to know about it. [00:50:54] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: I mean, the Trump administration thing, [00:50:56] Miko Lee: it was truly that. You said it was [00:50:57] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Yeah. Trump was it [00:50:58] Miko Lee: Trump got elected. People should know this happened. [00:51:00] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Yes. What do you have to tell children in this moment If they're Muslim, they're scared, and if they're not, they need a way to understand what it means to feel afraid. Both of those things need to happen at the same time of like, you have to offer comfort to the children of the marginalized. You have to offer perspective to the children who have the privilege not to feel that fear. And so I have this story and what I love about this story is. I know that children are capable of holding the complexity of this story is both very romantic and very sweet, and also the circumstances it happened under were completely unfair. That's the kind of logic children are able to hold, and they should be given the opportunity to hold that kind of complexity because it'll serve them for the rest of their life because most of most situations we confront are complex. [00:51:57] Miko Lee: And how were you able to eke out more details of that story? Did you do family interviews or was it more from your imagination? [00:52:05] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: My mother is a journalist and she kept my grandmother's journals from the time she was in Minidoka. So some of it comes from my grandmother's journals. Some of it comes from working with my mother to make sure that it felt accurate, tonally and factually. ‘Cause she was not gonna let me publish a book that was nonsense. I always say it's Truman Capote true. ‘Cause the situation, the sensory details, all that stuff real, but the dialogue is made up. The dialogue is art. The dialogue is a way for children to understand how they might've been feeling. They never had succinct, quick conversations like this about their humanity and how they felt about each other. It was a long courting process, and so, you know. That part is made up for children, [00:52:49] Miko Lee: but you, but you did include actual quotes from her journal too, right? [00:52:53] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Yes. The book closes with her words, not mine. [00:52:57] Miko Lee: Can you give us those final words? [00:53:00] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: The miracle is in us as long as we believe in beauty, in change, in hope. Which are words she wrote while she was imprisoned in Minidoka. [00:53:11] Miko Lee: And how does that resonate with you in the time of now? [00:53:15] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: They are words that I desperately cling to in the hope that I can see them become manifest. [00:53:23] Miko Lee: And what are you working on now? [00:53:26] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Making Authors Against Book Bans as operational as possible. [00:53:31] Miko Lee: And what does that look like? [00:53:32] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: In late 2025, we became a nonprofit corporation. We have fiscal sponsorship under EveryLibrary, which is a really wonderful advocacy group that's a combination [501](c)3-(c)4, which means you can make tax deductible donations to them, but also they do overtly political work. And so now we can receive tax deductible, donations and continue to do the overtly political work that we do. We are an unapologetically political organization. We are more than happy to help get people elected who fight for the freedom to read, and we are delighted to show the door to people who would stand in our way of that freedom. [00:54:09] Miko Lee: And how can people get more involved in your work? [00:54:13] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: They could absolutely go to authorsagainstbookbans.com and make a donation. We need it [laughs]. We are one of the only organizations that receives donations that exists for the sole purpose of fighting book bans. Most every other group in our space have an angle that book bans affect them, and so they fight against them, but that's not their only purview. It is our only purview. So if it is something that you were interested in fighting, then you could make a donation to us. I would suggest signing up to be on the email list from EveryLibrary because they mobilize everybody, not just authors and book creators. And if you are a book creator, self-published, traditionally published, we don't care. Then you should sign up to be a member of Authors Against Book Bans and you'll get calls to action every Friday. [00:55:07] Miko Lee: Thank you so much for sharing with us about your book and educating us about the work you're doing and appreciate hearing from you. Thank you for joining us. [00:55:16] Maggie Tokuda-Hall: Thank you for having me. [00:55:28] Miko Lee: Please check out our website, kpfa.org/program/apexexpress to find out more about our show and our guests tonight. We thank all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating, and sharing your visions with the world because your voices are important. Apex Express is produced by Ayame Keane-Lee, Anuj Vaidya, Cheryl Truong, Isabel Li, Jalena Keane-Lee, Miko Lee, Miata Tan, Preti Mangala-Shekar and Swati Rayasam. Tonight's show was produced by me Miko Lee, and edited by Ayame Keane-Lee. Have a great night.. The post APEX Express – 4.9.26 – Library Joy appeared first on KPFA.
Grab your limited edition ‘Energy Sovereignty Now!' t-shirts! There is now an insufficiency of energy sufficiency AND sovereignty tees in the world, but don't worry, the LMSU merch store has got you covered! Promises made, promises kept folks - grab your limited edition t-shirt right here. Subscribe to LMSU's Patreon for the latest episode of My Little GSOO™ This week Tennant and Frankie give Luke the slip as we unpack AEMO's 2026 Gas Statement of Opportunities. Electrification at pace? You betcha! Gas import terminals? Some still like ‘em! Global fuel crisis? So far unaccounted for, but we can't say the same for one c-word. Run, don't walk, over to www.letmesumup.net and subscribe to our Patreon to check it out. — Wouldn't you know, the world is *still* cray cray, but extant so let's take that win! The PM is one national address into this crisis and throw in the National Cabinet's latest four point plan (the National Fuel Security Plan) and some COVID-style PTSD is kicking in! But not to worry folks, we are at Level Two and the message is very much Don't Panic, Take The Train Or Work From Home If You Can. We reckon this is a fascinating exercise in laying down markers for messaging that will be ramped up, and we'll continue to speculate over some of the woolier bits in Levels 3 and 4. WATCH THIS SPACE. Our main course There's no shortage of ideas abounding at the moment on how exactly not to waste the current fuel crisis, but your intrepid hosts landed upon the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis' latest paper, ‘The perfect storm to boost energy security: How Australia can reduce its oil exposure in the wake of the Iran conflict.' Brought to us by Kevin Morrison and Amandine Denis-Ryan, the crew at IEEFA do a splendid job of laying out the history and context around Australia's current predicament of much more marginal reserves than our IEA counterparts and while they're at it, serve up a menu of sensible solutions on the supply and demand side, to ensure we don't find ourselves in this particular pickle again. Bilateral crisis supply agreements? We're seeing some signs of that! Electrification and energy efficiency? That sounds like a thing we're about! One more things Tennant's One More Thing is: true nerd appreciation for the just launched Artemis II! A cool, technically stupendous and peaceful adventure into space! Fun fact: Apollo-era NASA took funding peaking at about 4.6% of US GDP to land men on the moon. Artemis-era NASA is rebooting this while getting about 0.1% of US GDP Frankie's One More Thing is: A plug for the NSW Net Zero Commission's advice to the NSW Government intended to help inform the work underway for the new NSW Net Zero Plan to 2025, due to be released in mid-2026. They're big on electrification and methane, and Frankie is, unsurprisingly, a fan. Luke's One More Thing is: the just released movie of The Magic Faraway Tree. Luke had some trepidation noting Enid Blyton's outsized impact on his childhood reading, but the ultimate verdict was 3 out of 5 stars - from Menzel and his younguns! And that's it for now, Summerupperers. There is now a one-stop-shop for all your LMSU needs: head to letmesumup.net to support us on Patreon, procure merch, find back episodes, and leave us a voicemail!
Dorothy de Kok skims author bios with mild suspicion—aware they matter, but quietly convinced they are proof that even the greatest writers have writer's block when they have to write about themselves … and here we are. Her own storytelling journey began at twelve, when she attempted her first novel: an earnest and spectacularly terrible fan fiction of Enid Blyton's Magic Faraway Tree series. She finished it, reread it proudly, then lost it, which is just as well, as it was a threat to great literature. Since then, Dorothy has collected an unusually broad résumé: high school English teacher, academic editor, safe-house director, real estate agent, and hopeful but horrendous gardener. She has spent years listening to people's stories—students, clients, and survivors—and those voices sometimes find their way into her fiction. Michael T. Kuester is an engineer by day, science fiction writer by night. An avid hiker and cooking enthusiast, Michael is a passionately curious individual, and lives his life by the motto “In the twenty-first century, there's no excuse for an unanswered question”. Over the years he's devoted free time to researching everything from the history of naval warfare to the origins of potato chips. Michael resides in Cincinnati, Ohio, with his partner Jen, their two children, and their freeloader housemate Eddie the Cat. His work will be appearing soon in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, but L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 42 will mark his professional debut. Mark McWaters Mark McWaters has long been a fan of all things that go bump in the night, scratch at the door, or blow cold air on the back of your neck. From a very young age, he carried a pad and pencil around with him, composing poems to give to girls. He devoured all the Hardy Boys and Doc Savage books he could get his hands on and expanded his reading horizons from there. Robert Heinlein, Asimov, and Bradbury, whetted his appetite for Sci-Fi. Ann Rice's Interview With The Vampire blew his mind. A scene from Stephen King's Salem's Lot haunts him to this day. And Watcher by Dean Koontz made him a lifelong fan.
James Cameron-Wilson found #2, the Enid Blyton fantasy The Magic Faraway Tree, to be a charmless, farcical misfire. With Claire Foy and Andrew Garfield, it is full of shouty overacting, with music numbers crammed in and is a wasted opportunity. #7 They Will Kill You is a grotesque horror film about a New York highrise which is a temple to Satan. It's another with a surprising 15 certificate. Amazon documentary Man on the Run is about Paul McCartney, covering the breakup of The Beatles to the murder of John Lennon. On Amazon, it starts promisingly but, while there's plenty of home video, there's little that's new. After a dispiriting week, James watched the harrowing but brilliant The Killing Fields to cheer himself up. It's on C4 and Plex. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli on directing Zendaya and Robert Pattinson in his excellent new black comedy, The Drama.Hasan Hadi, writer-director of The President's Cake, discusses his acclaimed feature debut, which follows a young girl's quest to bake a cake for Saddam Hussein's birthday in 1990s Iraq.Baby Reindeer's Jessica Gunning is in town to discuss her latest role in the Enid Blyton blockbuster The Magic Faraway Tree.Presenter, Jason Di RossoProducer, Sarah CorbettSound, Tim SymondsArts editor, Sarah L'Estrange
This week, an Enid Blyton classic is adapted for the big screen with THE MAGIC FARAWAY TREE (04:47), while Zazie Beetz is out for vengeance in the action-horror-comedy THEY WILL KILL YOU (15:35), and Dakota Johnson considers polyamory in comedy SPLITSVILLE (30:39). Plus, in our HOT TAKE (45:20), we ask: do we *really* need any more “eat the rich” movies? If you would like to donate directly towards humanitarian aid in Gaza, please visit: MAPBuy Clarisse's Wes Anderson book hereTweet us @FadetoBlackPod on Twitter or DM @FadeToBlackPodcast on Instagram, Blue Sky and Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/fadetoblackpodcast/Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast - it makes a difference! The Fade To Black Podcast is part of the Stripped Media Network.AMON: @Amonwarmann CLARISSE: @clarisseloughreyHANNA: @hannainesflintMusic by The Last Skeptik. We are a Stripped Media podcast.
This week's Empire Podcast sees us clamber into the Magic Faraway Tree to talk with the writer and director, respectively, of the brand new Enid Blyton adaptation, Simon Farnaby and Ben Gregor, who tell Alex Godfrey all about how they branched out. Ahem. Either side of that, Chris Hewitt hosts Helen O'Hara, James Dyer, and Kobi Omenaka to discuss their favourite movie trees and competence porn; run their eye over the week's movie news, including the revelation that Stephen Colbert is co-writing a new Lord Of The Rings movie; and review Splitsville, They Will Kill You, and The Magic Faraway Tree. Enjoy!
Today we’re diving headfirst into the fantasy epic based on Enid Blyton's classic series, delivering magical worlds, a massive enchanted tree, and the kind of spectacle that makes you wish your living room was a cinema. While some of the modernised elements split us down the middle, the visual world-building is exactly what we dreamed of as kids.And Em has a review of the new slasher film that’s currently tearing up the cinema. With a Harry Potter fave taking on a wild new role and a plot full of gory surprises, we break down whether this hotel horror delivers or if it's just too bloody for its own good. Is it actually scary? Did Em spend the whole time covering her eyes? And why is this the perfect group cinema experience.Plus, we’ve started the new horror series from the Duffer Brothers - and it’s moodier, more claustrophobic, and far more unsettling than you’d think. It's a high-stakes wedding mystery that is so bingeable you’ll be up until 2am like Laura trying to figure out the twist. Three very different vibes. One very stacked weekend.Love binge-watching TV? The Spill has launched Watch Party — spoiler-filled episode deep dives into the shows everyone’s talking about. Find the feed on Apple or Spotify.Listen to The Spill New episodes drop every Monday–Friday!Mamamia: https://www.mamamia.com.au/podcasts/the-spill/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3mjNFVvJp1irXNVxKXXABOApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-spill/id1473523403Follow The Spill:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thespillpodcast/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thespillpodFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/thespillpodcast/Read all the latest entertainment news on Mamamia: https://mamamia.com.au/entertainment/Support Independent Women’s Media:https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe/Your subscription helps us continue to tell the stories that matter to women.Want to join the conversation?Have feedback or a topic you want us to discuss? Send us a voice message or email us at thespill@mamamia.com.au and we’ll get back to you ASAP!Discover more Mamamia podcasts here: https://www.mamamia.com.au/podcasts/CREDITSHosts: XX & XXExecutive Producer: Monisha IswaranAudio Producer: Scott StronachMamamia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast. Get 25% off Nala with your Mamamia subscription. Click here to get your code ends April 1st.Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Even in an enchanted tree where fairies and men with faces like the moon live, someone has to do the laundry. And in a film adaptation of the classic Enid Blyton book, The Magic Faraway Tree, that job falls to actress Jessica Gunning. She is Dame Washalot who, does a lot of laundry, carelessly tossing buckets of sudsy water down the tree, sometimes drenching children who discover the magic world in the branches. Jessica Gunning captured acting magic in 2024, staring in the hit series Baby Reindeer and wining just about every award going. She joins a stellar cast including Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy. The Magic Faraway Tree is in theaters now.
Friday Headlines: Trump says it’s up to Iran to make ceasefire deal Fuel crisis continues with more than 650 stations running dry Tropical Cyclone Narelle heads to north west WA IOC bans trans athletes from women's Olympic events Former Venezuelan president appears in court in New York Deep Dive: The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton is one of those stories that’s been loved across generations and now, it’s getting a fresh life on the big screen. The new film tackles our addiction to technology and follows a modern family who swap screens for the outdoors, only to discover a magical world that helps them reconnect with each other and themselves. In this episode of The Briefing, Helen Smith speaks with Jessica Gunning, who plays Dame Washalot and who you might also recognise from Baby Reindeer. She joined us while in Australia ahead of the film’s premiere to unpack why nostalgia continues to resonate, and whether the Faraway Tree series reminds us of the wonder we lose when we’re always looking down at our devices. Follow The Briefing: TikTok: @thebriefingpodInstagram: @thebriefingpodcast YouTube: @TheBriefingPodcastSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We at Rosebud are thrilled about today's guest, and we know you will be too: it's Richard E Grant. Actor, writer, influencer and star of one of the most loved British films of all time, Withnail and I, Richard talks to Gyles about his extraordinary childhood. Born to good-looking parents in the ex-pat community in then-Swaziland, Richard's young life was full of Enid Blyton, barbecues and Pelham puppets - but things changed when his mother left the family and his father descended into alcoholism. What follows is a story full of shocks and surprises - including adultery, attempted murder and estrangement - and is well worth listening to. Richard also tells Gyles about his move to London, how he broke into acting, and how he met and married his wife, Joan Washington. And he talks about how he has coped since Joan's death in 2021.Many thanks to Richard for this fascinating conversation.Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube here. Join The Rosebud Family here. And visit our website here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Dori is back from her 80s cruise and we find out how she didn't waste a single sway(ze), met the Mattress Brothers, and hear about the scariest thing in her cabin.Corey Feldman is a free man, but that doesn't mean he couldn't give you hives. And while we find out that he won't be on stage at the Oscars, he might just be popping up in a seat next to some celebs.We look at things from the 80s that we were irrationally afraid of, which leads us nicely into a David Hasselhoff heavy metal song.Dori's First Cruise Experience (00:01:02) Corey Feldman News (00:17:44) : https://people.com/corey-feldman-finalizes-divorce-ex-wife-courtney-anne-agrees-100k-spousal-support-settlement-1188667880s Childhood Fears (00:22:31): https://ultimateclassicrock.com/1980s-scary-things-kids/ George Michael/Wham! Releases (00:29:41): https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/mar/10/new-george-michael-movie-live-album Two 80s Truths and a Lie Game (00:31:09) #80s themed cruise, #90s themed cruise, #MSC Cruises, #Dori, #That 80s Show, #pop culture, #Walking on Sunshine, #Katrina and the Waves, #seasickness, #cruise experience, #South Africans, #friendly atmosphere, #queuing, #cabin sanctuary, #entertainment onboard, #80s music, #90s music, #themed dress-up nights, #Wham!, #ABBA, #Brenda Fassie, #variety show, #Michael Jackson impersonator, #80s fears, #cultural phenomena, #Ultimate Classic Rock, #nuclear war, #piranhas, #horror films, #Chucky, #Bigfoot, #yetis, #child abductions, #80s dogs, #Enid Blyton, #quicksand, #Bermuda Triangle, #George Michael, #Faith album, #Wham! songs, #Two 80s Truths and a Lie, #Christina Applegate, #Phil Collins, #David Hasselhoff, #podcast, #nostalgia, #social interaction, #cruise activities, #humorous anecdotes, #cultural commentary.
A quick content note: this episode includes conversations about fertility, miscarriage, baby loss, and the death of a parent. I know these topics can be difficult, so please listen in whatever way feels right for you.I absolutely loved recording this episode with Nicola Gill — she is such a joy to chat to. We talked about her latest novel, Identity Crisis (which I adored), her writing life, and of course the books that have shaped her own reading journey.And of course, no episode of Best Book Forward would be complete without book recommendations! Here's everything we mentioned, with links to buy:
The Luke and Pete Show is back for another year, and what better way to start 2026 than to have a deep and fairly involved conversation about paté? And when does a paté become a parfait? And when does it become a terrine?Elsewhere, Pete needs a new fridge, the lads run the rule over Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl, and there's plenty of other chat besides. Oh, and are we starting off the year with a brand new player into the Battery Daddy? Tune in to find out...New Year, new questions? Only one place to put them: hello@lukeandpeteshow.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Send us a textToday's Writing Process episode is with Fantasy author Abbigal Madder aka Abbie as I know her. I did this interview long before I really knew Abbie and she is such a hoot to be around and chat to. Through all of these podcast I ask the same questions and get such different responses from every one of my guests, which is why I love writers so damn much. Abbie's approach is also chaotic and planster coded. I would love to know what you think about it. About Abbie:Abigail Mader is an indie author from Australia. She loves the fantasy genre, getting lost in magical worlds since she was little. Her favourite author as a child was Enid Blyton, and today her love of fantasy has grown. When she's am not reading or writing, Abigail loves spending time with her family and days out in the beautiful Australian countryside and beaches, soaking in the natural beauty and finding inspiration for her next story.She also is at the helm of the AUS/NZ Indie Bookclub and apart of the Aussie Indie Hub team. Abigail's Links:WebsiteInstagramThreadsTiktokWant exclusive behind the scenes and early access to episodes join up to the mailing list over here.If you're looking for a cheerleader for your writing, then head on over to https://dreamingfullyawake.com/work-with-me/ and let's have a chat about how we can work together to get your writing on track. Follow the podcast on Instragram @thewritingapothecaryFollow Mandi on all socials: @mandikont
The Emma Rice Company's adaptation of Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales opened last week to rave reviews. Hannah grabbed some time with its founder, writer and director Emma Rice, to talk about a change of name, a new venue in Somerset, and Thomas. And a lot more besides, including Emma's time as artistic director at The Globe, something that did not end happily, and why she thinks we're all being a bit hard on Enid Blyton. More information about the Emma Rice Company here: https://www.emmaricecompany.co.uk/ To support us on Patreon visit Standard Issue Podcast | creating a magazine for ears, by women for women | Patreon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Afua Kyei, Chief Financial Officer at the Bank of England, has been named Britain's most influential black person. She grew up in South London, reading copious numbers of Enid Blyton books and listening to Boyzone, got 6 A levels and went to university a year early. She studied chemistry at Oxford and Princeton, but then had a change of heart . She became a chartered accountant and - in 2019 at the age of just 36 - she was appointed Chief Financial Officer at the Bank of England, the Bank's youngest and first ever black executive officer in its 325 year history. Mark Coles looks back at the life of this year's most influential Black Briton talking to Afua's friends, family and colleagues to discover how she combines parenting four children under the age of nine with balancing the books at the Bank of England. Presenter: Mark Coles Producers: Adele Armstrong and Mhairi MacKenzie Production coordinators: Sabine Schereck and Maria Ogundele Editor: Justine Lang Sound engineer: Gareth JonesPhoto credit: Nick Moorhead
Latest up from Spoken Label, features making her return is the wonderful Julia Webb.Julia advises "I was born in London but grew up on a council estate in Thetford, a small town in rural Norfolk surrounded by pine forest. Thetford is known for being the home of The Iceni tribe, the birthplace of Thomas Paine, the place where they filmed a lot of Dad's Army and (in the 1960s) as a London Overspill town.My ambitions to be a writer started when I was six-years-old and read The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton. I can trace my interest in magical realism, surrealism and love of language right back to the things read as a child - Dr Seuss, Enid Blyton, A.A. Milne, Tolkien and fairytales. However I left school (and home) at 16 with no qualifications and went to live in a commune. I continued to write short stories and poetry over the years, but with no real writing community I didn't really know how to improve them, and after my son was born I gravitated more towards art and printing while working as a pre-school supervisor. When I was 40 I had an epiphany of sorts and realised that writing was my first love. I quit my job and did a degree in creative writing at Norwich School of Art and Design (now known as NUA). After that I went on to do an MA in poetry at the University of East Anglia."Her website is: https://juliawebb.org/Her new book - Grey time can be found at all of the usual places including - https://ninearchespress.com/publications/poetry-collections/grey-time
Today, I am joined by author Ray Star. You might remember her from episode 51, Make the connection. If you'd like to hear Ray's vegan journey, how hummus shows up in her life check out that episode. Ray is an award-winning author with a passion for nature, animals, and the Earth. Ray is most known for the internationally bestselling fantasy fiction trilogy Earthlings, a coming-of-age dystopian read for lovers of climate fiction and magical realism, the final book of the trilogy “Land of Hope & Glory' was released earlier this year. Ray's writing style has been praised as 'a millennial Enid Blyton', and her debut trilogy reviewed as 'genre-defying', 'the Narnia of our time', and 'a masterpiece' across UK media.When Ray isn't writing, she is happiest spending time with her family and friends, exploring nature with her children and rescue dogs or teaching Writing For Nature workshops. A firm believer of magick, Ray can often be found stargazing under the moon with a tarot deck in one hand and a strong cuppa in the other. It is Ray's dream to one day open The Peridot Animal Sanctuary and Wildlife Reserve in England and that dream inspired Ray to close her business of fifteen years to pursue a writing career.Since this is Ray's second time on the pod we jump right into her latest book, what's she's up to now, Ray offers tips on how to write your own book, and much more!To connect with Ray:Visit her website https://www.raystarbooks.com/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@raystarbooks Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raystarbooks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RayStarBooks/To connect with me:Follow me on Facebook and Instagram @didyoubringthehummusFor more info on my Public Speaking 101 program: https://www.didyoubringthehummus.com/publicspeakingforactivistsContact me here or send me an email at info@didyoubringthehummus.comSign up for meditation sessions hereSign up for The Vegan Voyage, to sponsor the podcast, book meditations packages, or sign up for my Public Speaking program hereJoin my Podcast Fan Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/didyoubringthehummus/To be a guest on the podcast: https://www.didyoubringthehummus.com/beaguest©2025 Kimberly Winters - Did You Bring the Hummus LLCTheme Song ©2020 JP Winters @musicbyjpw
Kristin and Molly discuss how Ozoz Sokoh, an Ontario-based professor of food tourism and culinary anthropologist, went about creating her new book that explores the vastness that is Nigerian food. Ozoz shares her thoughts on Nigerian cuisine, why she loves it and where the inspiration for making this book a 'bridge' came from along with the trepidation she had for writing the proposal and the challenges of writing a project of this scope. We ask her about her audience, publishing in multiple markets and how she landed on the format and the language for the recipe titles and she speaks on how she changed over the course of the book's creation, the photography process and what she hopes to work on next.Hosts: Kate Leahy + Molly Stevens + Kristin Donnelly + Andrea NguyenEditor: Abby Cerquitella MentionsOzoz SokohWebsiteBlog: Kitchen ButterflyInstagramFeast AfriqueJourney By Plate Tedx Talk James Ransom photographyAnne McBrideEnid Blyton, British children's author Visit the Everything Cookbooks Bookshop to purchase a copy of the books mentioned in the showChop Chop: Cooking the Food of Nigeria, by Ozoz SokohMallory Towers, by Enid Blyton
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