Podcasts about pen usa award

When we asked prolific novelist Laura Pritchett to speak with us about writing fiction, little did we realize that not only would she offer us a host of practical advice about character, revision and ambition, she would also teach us about meeting our art with great self-compassion.  We speak about her two new novels out this year, Playing with Wildfire (Torrey House Press) and Three Keys (Random House Books), writing without a plot outline, and much more, including why joy must be a part of a fiction writer's practice. Laura Pritchett is the author of seven novels. Known for championing the complex and contemporary West and giving voice to the working class, her books have garnered the PEN USA Award, the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, the WILLA, the High Plains Book Award, several Colorado book awards, and others. She's also the author of two nonfiction books, one play, and was editor of three environmental-based anthologies. One novel, Stars Go Blue, has been optioned for TV rights. She's published hundreds of essays and short stories in national venues, most recently in The Sun, Terrain, Camas, Orion, Creative Nonfiction, and others. She directs the MFA in Nature Writing at Western Colorado University and holds a PhD from Purdue University. When not writing or teaching, she can be found sauntering around the West, especially her home state of Colorado. She particularly likes looking at clouds and wildflowers.Laura's websiteGOING GREEN: True Tales from Gleaners, Scavengers, and Dumpster Diver Edited by Laura Pritchett (with contributions by Christie and her mom, Ruth Friesen). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

A new 'Craftwork' episode about the art of literary collage. My guest is David Shields, author of How We Got Here: Melville Plus Nietzsche Divided by the Square Root of (Allan) Bloom Times Zizek (Squared) Equals Bannon and A Christian Existentialist and a Psychoanalytic Atheist Walk Into a Trump Rally, both of which are available from Sublation Media. Shields also wrote and directed a documentary film called How We Got Here, based on his book and available now on Prime and other platforms. ***Note: Here is a list of some of David's favorite works of literary collage. Shields is the internationally bestselling author of twenty-five books, including Reality Hunger (which, in 2020, Lit Hub named one of the most important books of the past decade), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (New York Timesbestseller), Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and PEN USA Award), Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity (PEN/Revson Award), and Other People: Takes & Mistakes (NYTBR Editors' Choice). The Very Last Interview was published by New York Review Books in 2022. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, two NEA fellowships, and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, Shields--a senior contributing editor of Conjunctions--has published essays and stories in New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Esquire, Yale Review, Salon, Slate, Tin House, A Public Space, McSweeney's, Believer, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Best American Essays. His work has been translated into two dozen languages. The film adaptation of I Think You're Totally Wrong: A Quarrel, which Shields co-wrote and co-stars in, was released in 2017 and is now available as a DVD on Prime Video. Shields wrote, produced, and directed Lynch: A History, a 2019 documentary about Marshawn Lynch's use of silence, echo, and mimicry as key tools of resistance (streaming on Prime, Peacock, AMC, Sundance, Apple, and many other platforms). I'll Show You Mine, a feature film that Shields co-wrote and was produced by Mark and Jay Duplass, was released in 2023 and is now available on Prime and several other platforms. A new film, How We Got Here, which Shields wrote and directed and which argues that Melville plus Nietzsche divided by the square root of (Allan) Bloom times Zizek (squared) equals Bannon, is streaming now on Prime and several other platforms; the companion volume is forthcoming in September 2024. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Twitter Instagram  TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Carl Phillips is the author of 17 books of poetry, most recently Scattered Snows, to the North and Then the War: And Selected Poems 2007-2020, which won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. His other honors include the 2021 Jackson Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the Kingsley Tufts Award, a Lambda Literary Award, the PEN/USA Award for Poetry, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Library of Congress, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Academy of American Poets. Phillips has also written three prose books, most recently My Trade is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing; and he has translated the Philoctetes of Sophocles. He lives on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts. We talked about how he puts a collection together, vulnerability and guardedness, To the Lighthouse, relationships, darkness, truth and revelation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

PEN USA Award-winning author Victor Lodato chats with Zibby about HONEY, a masterful and utterly enchanting novel about Honey Fasinga, an unforgettable heroine who escapes her mob family at 17 and reinvents herself as a stylish personality in the LA art world… but returns home decades later to settle old scores and confront family ghosts. Victor reveals who inspired this character and how he was able to capture the voice of an 82-year-old woman so perfectly. He also touches on his transition from theater to novel writing and describes his fascinating creative process, which always starts with a character's voice.Purchase on Bookshop: https://bit.ly/3VYRXpcShare, rate, & review the podcast, and follow Zibby on Instagram @zibbyowens! Now there's more! Subscribe to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books on Acast+ and get ad-free episodes. https://plus.acast.com/s/moms-dont-have-time-to-read-books. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Debra Marquart is a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts & Sciences and teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University, as well as the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program at University of Southern Maine. Marquart serves as Iowa's Poet Laureate and the Senior Editor of Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment. The author of seven books―including The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere and Small Buried Things: Poems―Marquart has been featured on NPR and the BBC and has received over 50 grants and awards including an NEA Fellowship, a PEN USA Award, a New York Times Editors' Choice commendation, and Elle Magazine's Elle Lettres Award. In 2021, Marquart was awarded a Poets Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. Her most recent book is Gratitude with Dogs: New and Collected. For more information: debramarquart.com Review the Rattlecast on iTunes! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rattle-poetry/id1477377214 As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins. For links to all the past episodes, visit: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Write a poem that includes multiple lists. Next Week's Prompt: Look at an old family photograph, and find an object in the background that you hadn't noticed before. Write a poem about it. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Steve Lopez is a Los Angeles Times columnist, four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and best-selling author. He has been a columnist for Time magazine, the Philadelphia Inquirer, San Jose Mercury News and Oakland Tribune, after beginning his career in 1975 as a sportswriter. He is the winner of more than a dozen national journalism awards, including the H.L. Mencken, Ernie Pyle and Mike Royko awards. Lopez has written three novels and a best-selling non-fiction book, The Soloist, a New York Times bestseller and winner of the PEN USA Award for Literary non-fiction. The book was the subject of a Dreamworks movie by the same name. His latest book, Independence Day: What I Learned About Retirement, from Some Who've Done It And Some Who Never Will, will be released in November 2022. Steve.Lopez@LATimes.com@LATSteveLopez Facebook.Steve.Lopez.Independence https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-lopez-3929962/

Passionate and Inspirational, Steven Dietz visits Playwright's Spotlight to discuss the musicality of dialogue, kairos moments throughout a play, and what he calls The Living  Play, in which he unpacks his technique of using motion, status, and time opposed to action and conflict. We also discuss taboo topics, writing out of uncertainty, overlapping dialogue, intricacy and layers,  the mythology of playwriting as well as his time at Playwrights' Center and working with some of the greats. Probably one of the most educational discussions of the craft I've had so far. I hope you enjoy it.Steven Diezt's thirty-plus plays and adaptations have been seen at over one hundred regional theaters, as well as Off-Broadway and has International productions in over twenty countries. In 2019, he was once again named one of the 20 Most-Produced Playwrights in America by American Theatre Magazine. He was awarded the American Theatre Critics Association's Steinberg New Play Citation for his play Bloomsday; the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award for both –Fiction and Still Life with Iris; the PEN USA Award in Drama for Lonely Planet; and the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Sherlock Homes: The Final Adventure. Other plays include Becky's New Car, This Random World, Last of the Boys, Rancho Mirage, Shooting Star, Yankee Tavern, Inventing van Gogh, Private Eyes, Rocket Man, God's Country, and The Nina Variations. He taught in the MFA Playwriting and Directing program at UT/Austin for twelve years and currently serves as a Dramatists Guild "Traveling Master"—teaching workshops in playwriting, story-making, and collaboration across the U.S.To view the video format of this episode, visit the link below -https://youtu.be/CnS8-gegiUcLinks to sites and resources mentioned in this episode - Playwrights' Center -https://pwcenter.orgBroadway Licensing/Dramatists Play Services -https://www.dramatists.comConcord Publishing/Samuel French -https://www.concordtheatricals.comNational New Play Network -https://nnpn.orgWebsites and socials for James Elden, Punk Monkey Productions and Playwright's SpotlightPunk Monkey Productions - www.punkmonkeyproductions.comPLAY Noir -www.playnoir.comPLAY Noir Anthology –www.punkmonkeyproductions.com/contact.htmlJames Elden -Twitter - @jameseldensauerIG - @alakardrakeFB - fb.com/jameseldensauerPunk Monkey Productions and PLAY Noir - Twitter - @punkmonkeyprods                  - @playnoirla IG - @punkmonkeyprods       - @playnoir_la FB - fb.com/playnoir        - fb.com/punkmonkeyproductionsPlaywright's Spotlight -Twitter - @wrightlightpod IG - @playwrights_spotlightPlaywriting services through Los Angeles Collegiate Playwrights Festivalwww.losangelescollegiateplaywrightsfestival.com/services.htmlSupport the show

Walter is the author of seven novels, one book of short stories and one nonfiction book. His work has been selected three times for Best American Short Stories as well as the Pushcart Prize and Best American Nonrequired Reading. He's been published in, Harper's, Esquire, McSweeney's, Tin House, Ploughshares, the New York Times, the Washington Post and many others.He began his writing career in 1987 as a reporter for his hometown newspaper, The Spokesman-Review where he was a finalist for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize as part of a team covering the shootout and standoff at Ruby Ridge, in Northern Idaho. Eventually he wrote about this in his first book, Every Knee Shall Bow, in 1995. He has also worked as a screenwriter and has taught graduate creative writing at the University of Iowa, Pacific University, Eastern Washington and Pacific Lutheran.Walter has twice won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award (for The Zero and We Live in Water), the Washington State Book Award (The Cold Millions) and was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize (The Zero) and the PEN/USA Award in both fiction (The Zero) and nonfiction (Every Knee Shall Bow). His novel Beautiful Ruins was a #1 New York Times bestseller and spent more than a year on the bestseller list. It was also Esquire's Book of the Year and NPR Fresh Air's Novel of the Year. The Financial Lives of the Poets was Time Magazine's#2 novel of the year and Walter's story collection, We Live in Water, was longlisted for the Story Prize and the Frank O'Connor Short Story Award. Walter's latest novel is the national bestseller, The Cold Millions, A BOOK OF HISTROICAL FICTION “Featuring an unforgettable cast of cops and tramps, suffragists and socialists, madams and murderers, The Cold Millions is a tour de force from a “writer who has planted himself firmly in the first rank of American authors” (Boston Globe). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

SubText Books and East Side Freedom Library are pleased to present a virtual event to celebrate the release of "Yellow Rain" by Mai Der Vang (Graywolf Press) on Friday, October 1st at 7:00 PM. Mai Der Vang will be in conversation with Kao Kalia Yang. About: In this staggering work of documentary, poetry, and collage, Mai Der Vang reopens a wrongdoing that deserves a new reckoning. As the United States abandoned them at the end of its war in Vietnam, many Hmong refugees recounted stories of a mysterious substance that fell from planes during their escape from Laos starting in the mid-1970s. This substance, known as “yellow rain,” caused severe illnesses and thousands of deaths. These reports prompted an investigation into allegations that a chemical biological weapon had been used against the Hmong in breach of international treaties. A Cold War scandal erupted, wrapped in partisan debate around chemical arms development versus control. And then, to the world's astonishment, American scientists argued that yellow rain was the feces of honeybees defecating en masse—still held as the widely accepted explanation. The truth of what happened to the Hmong, to those who experienced and suffered yellow rain, has been ignored and discredited. Integrating archival research and declassified documents, Yellow Rain calls out the erasure of a history, the silencing of a people who at the time lacked the capacity and resources to defend and represent themselves. In poems that sing and lament, that contend and question, Vang restores a vital narrative in danger of being lost, and brilliantly explores what it means to have access to the truth and how marginalized groups are often forbidden that access. Mai Der Vang is an editorial member of the Hmong American Writers' Circle. Her poetry has appeared in the New Republic, Poetry, and the Virginia Quarterly Review, and her essays have been published in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Washington Post. Her debut collection, Afterland, received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. She lives in California. Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong-American writer, teacher and public speaker. Born in the refugee camps of Thailand to a family that escaped the genocide of the Secret War in Laos, she came to America at the age six. Yang holds degrees from Carleton College and Columbia University. Her works of creative nonfiction include The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, The Song Poet, What God is Honored Here?: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss By and For Indigenous Women and Women of Color, and Somewhere in the Unknown World. Yang has also written multiple children's books such as A Map Into the World, The Shared Room, and The Most Beautiful Thing, Yang Warriors, and the forthcoming From the Tops of the Trees. Her work has won numerous awards and recognition including multiple Minnesota Book Awards, a Charlotte Zolotow Honor, an ALA Notable Children's Book Award, Dayton's Literary Peace Prize, and a PEN USA Award in Nonfiction. View the video: https://youtu.be/Wu2-CoXNeH0

Have you ever felt that someone touched your soul? And, as a result of your meeting, left it just a little fuller? That's exactly how I felt after talking with Laura Pritchett. She is a writer, an award-winning author, a lover of all things nature and an advocate for it's survival. We talk about how the core themes in her work are stories of the precarity of life. Laura shares her own precarious story and how this prompted her writing, "Making Friends with Death: A Field Guide to your Impeding Last Breath". This conversation came just at the right time for me. Connecting with the natural world has become a big part of my healing: physically, emotionally and spiritually. Laura Pritchett is a mere mortal who will someday die—and she's doing a little better with that fact now! She's also the author of nine books. She began her writing journey with the short story collection Hell's Bottom, Colorado, which won the PEN USA Award for Fiction and the Milkweed National Fiction Prize. This was followed by the novels Sky Bridge, Stars Go Blue, Red Lightning, and The Blue Hour. Her novels have received starred reviews from Booklist, Publisher's Weekly, and School Library Journal, and The Blue Hour was listed as one of the “Top 5 books that will make you think about what it is to be human” by PBS and made the Booklist Editor's Choice for 2017. She also has two nonfiction books: Great Colorado Bear Stories and Making Friends with Death: A Field Guide to Your Impending Last Breath. She's also involved with environmental issues, and is the editor of three anthologies about conservation: Pulse of the River, Home Land, and Going Green: True Tales from Gleaners, Scavengers, and Dumpster Divers. Her essays and short stories have appeared in The Sun, The New York Times, Salon, High Country News, The Millions, Pinch, The Normal School, Publisher's Weekly, Brain, Child, and many others. She directs the MFA in Nature Writing at Western Colorado University

The East Side Freedom Library and the Ramsey County Historical Society invite you to our monthly “History Revealed” program, featuring Kao Kalia Yang. As the country's doors were closing and nativism was on the rise, Kao Kalia Yang—herself a refugee from Laos—set out to tell the stories of the refugees to whom University Avenue is now home. Here are people who have summoned the energy and determination to make a new life even as they carry an extraordinary burden of hardship, loss, and emotional damage. In Yang's exquisite, poetic, and necessary telling, the voices of refugees from all over the world restore humanity to America's strangers and redeem its long history of welcome. KAO KALIA YANG is a Hmong-American writer. She holds degrees from Carleton College and Columbia University. Yang is the author of The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir winner of the 2009 Minnesota Book Awards in Creative Nonfiction/Memoir and Readers' Choice, a finalist for the PEN USA Award in Creative Nonfiction, and the Asian Literary Award in Nonfiction. Her second book, The Song Poet won the 2016 Minnesota Book Award in Creative Nonfiction Memoir, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Chautauqua Prize, a PEN USA Award in Nonfiction, and the Dayton's Literary Peace Prize. The story has been commissioned as a youth opera by the Minnesota Opera and will premiere in the spring of 2021. She is now writing a series of children's books. For this event, before we open the virtual floor for questions and comments from audience members, Yang will be joined in conversation by four readers of her book: Saymoukda Duanphouxay Vongsay is an award-winning Lao American poet, playwright, cultural producer, and social practice artist. She is the author of the children's book WHEN EVERYTHING WAS EVERYTHING (Full Circle Publishing) and is currently the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence at Theater Mu. Visit her at www.SaymoukdaTheRefugenius.com and follow her @refugenius. Thet-Htar Thet (she/her/hers) is a writer, educator and activist originally from Yangon Myanmar. Now based in her home country, Thet-Htar is focused on education reform and identity-driven writing as a consultant for UNESCO and a freelance creative nonfiction writer. Sangay Taythi is a Tibetan refugee born in India who with his family immigrated to the United States in 1998. He has been a community and labor organizer, including the Students for a Free Tibet chapter at the University of Minnesota, the Regional Tibetan Youth Congress of Minnesota, the Tibetan American Foundation of Minnesota, the Tibetan National Congress and Tibetans for Black Lives and SEIU Healthcare Minnesota. Najaha Musse is a 4th year medical student pursuing a doctorate in Osteopathic Medicine. Her family fled rural Ethiopia for a refugee camp in Nairobi Kenya, and then settled in Minnesota where she began formal education in the 3rd grade. As the oldest in a family of 8 children, she became the first in her family to graduate from high school and receive a college degree. While attending medical school, Najaha has focused on social justice issues pertaining to educational access for disadvantaged students and social medicine. To view the video: https://youtu.be/c_p7Nx_SmD8

Live Drop guest Kao Kalia Yang is a celebrated Hmong-American writer. She holds degrees from Carleton College and Columbia University. Yang is the author of The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir  winner of the 2009 Minnesota Book Awards in Creative Nonfiction/Memoir and Readers' Choice, a finalist for the PEN USA Award in Creative Nonfiction, and the Asian Literary Award in Nonfiction. Her second book, The Song Poet  won the 2016 Minnesota Book Award in Creative Nonfiction Memoir, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Chautauqua Prize, a PEN USA Award in Nonfiction, and the Dayton's Literary Peace Prize.Yang's debut children's book, A Map Into the World  is a American Library Association Notable Book of the Year, a Charlotte Zolotow Honor Book, winner of the Northstar Best Illustrator Award, and winner of the 2020 Minnesota Book Award in Children's Literature. Her co-edited collection titled What God is Honored Here?: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss By and For Indigenous Women and Women of Color  is a groundbreaking work that centers the poetry and prose of women whose voices have been neglected and silenced on the topic despite the fact that they experience these losses disproportionately. Her most recent Children's book: The Most Beautiful Thing   was just published on October 6th, 2020. Kalia is also a teacher and public speaker.I wanted to talk to Kalia about the legacy of the Secret War in Laos - how it is remembered in the Hmong diaspora. A civil war fought alongside Vietnam's in the shadows by the CIA, with Hmong fighters against communist insurgents. I ended up having an enlightening cultural conversation with a poet in real time about birth, life, suffering, loss, death and grief in Hmong tradition and in current-day America.  Her next book Somewhere in the Unknown World  – a collective memoir about the lives of refugees - is available for pre-order and comes out on November 8th, 2020. You can find out more about Kalia and her work at  kaokaliayang.comEpisode 49If you've enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more, please consider signing up as a contributing patron and join the community for exclusive commentary, and content.  A $10 a month donation will really keep us going - https://www.patreon.com/thelivedropAlternatively, if you would like to help make Season Three operational you could offer a one time donation of any amount right here ---> https://www.paypal.me/thelivedropThank you for listening and your support,Mark ValleyCrea Get bonus content on Patreon Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

A mother never wants to hear an explosion inside the house. Debra Marquart is a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University and Iowa’s Poet Laureate. Marquart is the author of six books including an environmental memoir of place, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere a collection of poems, Small Buried Things: Poem, and a short story collection, The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories. Marquart’s work has been featured on NPR and the BBC and has received over 50 grants and awards including an NEA Fellowship, a PEN USA Award, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice commendation. She is Senior Editor of Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment, and teaches in ISU’s MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment and in the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program. Her next book, Gratitude with Dogs Under Stars: New & Collected Poems, is forthcoming from New Rivers Press in 2021. “Kablooey is the Sound You’ll Hear,” can be found in the anthology, Bullets into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence.  Eds. Brian Clements, Alexandra Teague, and Dean Rader. Beacon Press, 2017: 112-113.

A speeding car can bring a greater death any day. Debra Marquart is a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University and Iowa’s Poet Laureate. A memoirist, poet, and performing musician, Marquart is the author of six books including an environmental memoir of place, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere and a collection of poems, Small Buried Things: Poems. Marquart’s short story collection, The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories drew on her experiences as a former road musician. A singer/songwriter, she continues to perform solo and with her jazz-poetry performance project, The Bone People, with whom she has recorded two CDs.  Marquart’s work has been featured on NPR and the BBC and has received over 50 grants and awards including an NEA Fellowship, a PEN USA Award, a New York Times Editors’ Choice commendation, and Elle Magazine’s Elle Lettres Award. The Senior Editor of Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment, Marquart teaches in ISU’s interdisciplinary MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment and in the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. Her next book, Gratitude with Dogs Under Stars: New & Collected Poems, is forthcoming from New Rivers Press in 2021.

Writing Barn friend and master storyteller Kathi Appelt returns to The Porchlight after having joined Bethany previously in episode 5. In this latest episode, they discuss Kathi's first young adult novel, ANGEL THIEVES, as well as her picture book MAX ATTACKS, which will be released this summer. Kathi's books have won numerous national and state awards, including the Irma and Simon Black Award, Children’s Choice Award, Teacher’s Choice Award, the Oppenheimer Gold Award, Parent’s Choice Award, Storytelling World Award, Growing Good Kids Award, Texas Writer’s League Award for Children’s Literature, the Texas Institute of Letters Award, Best Books for Young Adults, VOYA Top of the Shelf Award, and a host of others. Kathi's first novel, THE UNDERNEATH, was a National Book Award Finalist and a Newbery Honor Book.  It also received the Pen USA Award, and was a finalist for the Heart of Hawick Children’s Book Award. Her novel, THE TRUE BLUE SCOUTS OF SUGAR MAN SWAMP, was a National Book Award Finalist in 2013. In 2016, MAYBE A FOX, co-written with Alison McGhee, won the Texas Institute of Letters Award for Middle Grade Literature and was named to the Texas Library Association’s “Texas Bluebonnet Master List.” In 2009, Kathi was named “Texas Distinguished Writer” by the Friends of the Abilene Public Library.   ANGEL THIEVES took three years and countless hours of research to write even though Kathi grew up on the Houston bayou. Getting the history of the city and the people right and telling the truth as deeply as possible were vital to Kathi as she crafted this complex story. She and Bethany discuss the misrepresentation in history that has shaped us and continues to do so and why Kathi used sensitivity readers to help her represent the characters and world in this novel as honestly as possible. They also discuss the importance of place in fiction and how setting can be the backbone of a story. Both writers share their delight in seeing how children's literature, especially picture books, has expanded to include difficult subjects that, when handled well, can impact children's worldview and teach them empathy. They give a shout-out to friend and fellow author, Kekla Magoon, and her beautiful books and they discuss how the children they write for give them courage to tackle tough topics with honesty as Kekla and many authors do so skillfully in their work. Also, Bethany and Kathi talk about how long stories and ideas can live with us and reassure writers that not every idea has to be written right now. In fact, ANGEL THIEVES was really 25 years in the making rather than just three. Listen today to this inspiring episode with the talented and insightful Kathi Appelt and find out more about Kathi and her work at https://www.kathiappelt.com/

Laura Pritchett is a mere mortal who is fascinated with death. She is also the author of five novels, two nonfiction books, and one play. Her work has been the recipient of the PEN USA Award, the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, and others. She holds a PhD from Purdue University. Watch Laura's TEDx talk HERE.  Connect with Laura HERE.  BeTheTalk is a 7 day a week podcast where Nathan Eckel chats with talkers from TEDx & branded events. Tips tools and techniques that can help you give the talk to change the world at BeTheTalk.com !

Laura Pritchett is a mere mortal who is fascinated with death. She is also the author of five novels, two nonfiction books, and one play. Her work has been the recipient of the PEN USA Award, the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, and others. She holds a PhD from Purdue University. Watch Laura's TEDx talk HERE.  Connect with Laura HERE.  BeTheTalk is a 7 day a week podcast where Nathan Eckel chats with talkers from TEDx & branded events. Tips tools and techniques that can help you give the talk to change the world at BeTheTalk.com !

In the Province of the Gods (University of Wisconsin Press) An American's journey of profound self-discovery in Japan, and an exquisite tale of cultural and physical difference, sexuality, love, loss, mortality, and the ephemeral nature of beauty and art. Kenny Fries embarks on a journey of profound self-discovery as a disabled foreigner in Japan, a society historically hostile to difference. As he visits gardens, experiences Noh and butoh, and meets artists and scholars, he also discovers disabled gods, one-eyed samurai, blind chanting priests, and A-bomb survivors. When he is diagnosed as HIV positive, all his assumptions about Japan, the body, and mortality are shaken, and he must find a way to reenter life on new terms. Praise for In the Province of Gods "Like the best memoirs, Kenny Fries’s In the Province of the Gods reminds us of the genre’s twinned truths: first, that the surest way to discover the self is to look out at the world, and second, that the best way to teach others about something is to tell them not ‘what it is,’ but what it means to you. Fries’s deft, questioning prose is as full of compassion as curiosity, and his revelations about himself are no less compelling than what he learns about Japan.”—Dale Peck, author of Martin and John “Elegant and probing, In the Province of the Gods reads like the log of an early adventurer charting a newly discovered land. History, sexual politics, disability, and wooden fortune sticks are blended into an unexpected, tightly written exploration of Japanese culture. Fries may be the guy on the journey, but we’re the ones making the discoveries.”—Susan R. Nussbaum, author of Good Kings, Bad Kings “In this subtle page turner, Fries helps reinvent the travel-as-pilgrimage narrative.  He neither exoticizes nor shies away from the potential pitfalls of a western mind traveling abroad; instead he demonstrates how, through an all too rare open heart and a true poet’s eye, bridges can be built, and understanding deepened, one sincere action at a time.”—Marie Mutsuki Mockett, author of Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye “Kenny Fries writes out of the pure hot emergency of a mortal being trying to keep himself alive. So much is at stake here—health, affection, culture, trauma, language—but its greatest surprise is what thrives in the midst of suffering. A beautiful book.”—Paul Lisicky, author of The Narrow Door Kenny Fries is the author of Body, Remember: A Memoir and The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory, winner of the Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights. He is the editor of Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out and author of the libretto for The Memory Stone, an opera commissioned by Houston Grand Opera. He teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Goddard College. Photo by Michael R. Dekker Emily Rapp Black is the author of Poster Child: A Memoir, and The Still Point of the Turning World, which was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the PEN USA Award in Nonfiction. Her book-length lyric essay, Casa Azul Cripple, which examines the intersection of art, disability, and sex through the life and work of Frida Kahlo, is forthcoming from the New York Review of Books/NottingHill Editions in 2020. She is at work on a book about the resilience of objects and forces in the world called The Wingbeats of Insects and Birds, for which she received a 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship. Emily is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California-Riverside, where she teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing Program and in the School of Medicine. She lives with her husband, writer and editor Kent Black, and their daughter in Redlands, California.

Deb Caletti is an award-winning author and National Book Award finalist. Her many books for young adults include STAY, ESSENTIAL MAPS FOR THE LOST, THE LAST FOREVER, and  HONEY BABY SWEETHEART,  winner of the Washington State Book award, the PNBA Best Book Award, and a finalist for the PEN USA Award. Caletti's books feature the Pacific Northwest, and her young adult work is popular for tackling difficult issues typically reserved for adult fiction. Caletti’s complex stories center around healthy and unhealthy relationship dynamics, family (including stepfamilies), change and resilience, and the connections between human nature and animal nature Her books for adults include HE'S GONE, THE SECRETS SHE KEEPS and her upcoming fourteenth book, WHAT'S BECOME OF HER,. She lives with her family in Seattle. http://debcaletti.com/  Radio host and author Laura Moe spent most of her working life as a librarian and English teacher in central and Southeastern Ohio, but has recently moved to Seattle where she writes full-time. Moe is the author of YA novels PARALLEL LINES (Fat Cats, 2015) and BREAKFAST WITH NERUDA (Merit Press, 2016, ) named by the New York Public Library as one the Best Books for Teens in 2016 and a Top Pick for VOYA. She is owned by a spoiled white cat and is working on a sequel to BREAKFAST WITH NERUDA. https://www.lauramoebooks.com/ This is a copyrighted podcast solely owned by the Authors on The Air Global Radio Network LLC  

Border Music (Talisman House) Border Music is Paul Vangelisti’s thirty-third book of poetry, bringing together work from the last ten years, in sundry forms from the personal lyric, to alphabet poems, to longer collage and hybrid projects, to musically inspired acrostics. Some of these poems first appeared in limited editions here and abroad, and are now made available in one volume. Border Music is Vangelisti’s second book from Talisman House, with the collectionTwo having appeared in 2011. As Bill Mohr noted in the Chicago Review, “If seemingly willful obscurity is often a deterrent in reading or viewing work from any avant-garde, Vangelisti's poems are replete with a sustained clarity that invites us to savor these moments without being penalized for letting go of that which seems inaccessible.” Paul Vangelisti is the author of more than thirty books of poetry, as well as being a noted translator from Italian. In 2015 his Solitude was published in a bilingual edition by Galleria Mazzoli Editore in Modena; and a new collection, Border Music, has just appeared from Talisman House in Greenfield, MA. In 2006, Lucia Re’s and his translation of Amelia Rosselli’s War Variations won both the Premio Flaiano in Italy and the PEN-USA Award for Translation; while in 2010, his translation of Adriano Spatola’s The Position of Things: Collected Poems, 1961-1992 received an Academy of American Poets Prize. From 1971-1982 he was co-editor, with John McBride, of the literary magazine Invisible City and, from 1993-2002, edited Ribot, the annual report of the College of Neglected Science. He worked as a journalist at the Hollywood Reporter (1972-1974), and as Cultural Affairs Director at KPFK Radio (1974-1982). Vangelisti was Founding Chair of the Graduate Writing program at Otis College of Art & Design in Los Angeles, and is currently a professor in that program.

Aug. 30, 2014. Cynthia Kadohata appears at the 2014 Library of Congress National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. Speaker Biography: Though this Japanese-American author is able to sum up her life in eight simple words -- "laughter, writing, son, dog, California, tacos, ice cream" -- she has many memorable stories to tell young readers. Kadohata has received numerous awards and honors, including the Newbery Medal for "Kira-Kira," the National Book Award for "The Thing About Luck," the Jane Addams Peace Award and Pen USA Award for "Weedflower" and the California Young Reader Medal for "Cracker! The Best Dog in Vietnam." Her current novel is "Half a World Away," about a troubled Romanian boy who has been adopted by an American family and whose parents are now seeking to adopt another child from Kazakhstan. For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6502

Hampton Sides is one of the best known – and bestselling – American historians of the past decade. Sides first made a name for himself with 2001’s Ghost Soldiers, a World War II narrative chronicling the greatest rescue mission in the history of our Armed Forces. The debut received the PEN USA Award for Nonfiction […]

Wholly Falsetto With People Dancing (Otis Books) An older man's not-so-divine comedy, Vangelisti's FALSETTO is in three parts, corresponding to Hell, Purgatory and Paradise: namely, "Westernmost," the Los Angeles of a poet's daybook; the fool's purgatory of "An Italian Journal," some three weeks up & down the peninsula; and finally, "Wholly Falsetto with People Dancing," an alphabetical memoir of that invisible country of dead poets and loves that are no more. The trips through the first two territories in the work, Los Angeles and Italy, are documented more or less "on the run," in stark contrast to the contemplative nature of the final section of recollections. Among the several subjects interwoven throughout the narrative is Vangelisti's exploration of an 'un-American' literary tradition, set up against that of the dominant Anglo-American culture. Paul Vangelisti is the author of some twenty books of poetry, as well as being a noted translator from Italian. In addition to his new book, Wholly Falsetto with People Dancing, an older man's not-so-divine comedy, his most recent book of poems, Two, appeared from Talisman House in 2011. In 2006, Lucia Re's and his translation of Amelia Rosselli's War Variations won both the Premio Flaiano in Italy and the  PEN-USA Award for Translation. In 2010, his translation of Adriano Spatola's The Position of Things: Collected Poems, 1961-1992 won the Academy of American Poets Raizzis/de Palchi Book Prize for Translation. From 1971-1982 he was co-editor, with John McBride, of the literary magazine Invisible City and, from 1993-2002, edited Ribot, the annual report of the College of Neglected Science. He worked as a journalist at the Hollywood Reporter (1972-1974), and as Cultural Affairs Director at KPFK Radio (1974-1982). Currently, with Luigi Ballerini, he is editing a six-volume anthology of U.S. poetry from 1960 to the present, Nuova poesia americana, for Mondadori in Milan. Vangelisti is Founding Chair of the Graduate Writing program at Otis College of Art & Design in Los Angeles. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MAY 11, 2013. COPIES OF THE BOOK FROM THIS EVENT CAN BE PURCHASED HERE: http://www.skylightbooks.com/event/paul-vangelisti-reads-wholly-falsetto-people-dancing

Lydia Millet is the guest. She is a Guggenheim fellow, a past recipient of the PEN-USA Award for Fiction, and her story collection, Love in Infant Monkeys (2009), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.  Her latest novel, Magnificence, is now available in hardcover from W.W. Norton and Company. Jonathan Lethem raves “[Magnificence is] elegant, darkly comic. . . with overtones variously of Muriel Spark, Edward Gorey and JG Ballard, full of contemporary wit and devilish fateful turns for her characters, and then also to knit together into a tapestry of vast implication and ethical urgency, something as large as any writer could attempt: a kind of allegorical elegy for life on a dying planet. Ours, that is.” And Salon calls it "Flawlessly beautiful." Monologue topics:  chest colds, tuberculosis, the consumption, agent, manuscript, uncertainty, reading, the concept of "good" art, self-perception. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Prepare yourself for "transformative and ingenious" work from a highly original and beloved California poet, Rae Armantrout, with graduate poet Charity Ketz. Rae Armantrout?s poetry occupies a key position in contemporary traditions of experimental lyricism. Angular and ironic, unsettlingly humorous and precise, her work applies deft pressure to the idioms of everyday interaction, consumer culture, and dream. Armantrout?s poems are motivated by an ?activating desire for clarity," and yet it is a clarity that refuses easy certainties or disclosures. Instead, her rigorous lyricism works by way of acute juxtaposition and productive contradictions, creating a thrilling ?vertigo effect?** for its readers. Her most recent book, Next Life (Wesleyan UP), pushes through narrative surfaces to arrive at the unexpected complexities subtending both language and event. Her "truly philosophical poetry" consistently reveals a "force of mind that contests all assumptions" (NYT Book Review). Rae Armantrout has published nine books of poetry, including: Up to Speed (Wesleyan 2004), a finalist for the PEN USA Award in Poetry; Veil: New and Selected Poems (2001), also a finalist for the PEN Center USA Award, and The Pretext (2001). In 1998, Atelos Press published her prose memoir, True. She is a professor in the literature department at the University of California, San Diego, where she teaches writing. Charity Ketz is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Cornell and the recipient of fellowships from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has published a chapbook, Locust in Bloom, through Poet's Corner Press, and has poems forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, New Orleans Review, and Artful Dodge.  

Prepare yourself for "transformative and ingenious" work from a highly original and beloved California poet, Rae Armantrout, with graduate poet Charity Ketz. Rae Armantrout?s poetry occupies a key position in contemporary traditions of experimental lyricism. Angular and ironic, unsettlingly humorous and precise, her work applies deft pressure to the idioms of everyday interaction, consumer culture, and dream. Armantrout?s poems are motivated by an ?activating desire for clarity," and yet it is a clarity that refuses easy certainties or disclosures. Instead, her rigorous lyricism works by way of acute juxtaposition and productive contradictions, creating a thrilling ?vertigo effect?** for its readers. Her most recent book, Next Life (Wesleyan UP), pushes through narrative surfaces to arrive at the unexpected complexities subtending both language and event. Her "truly philosophical poetry" consistently reveals a "force of mind that contests all assumptions" (NYT Book Review). Rae Armantrout has published nine books of poetry, including: Up to Speed (Wesleyan 2004), a finalist for the PEN USA Award in Poetry; Veil: New and Selected Poems (2001), also a finalist for the PEN Center USA Award, and The Pretext (2001). In 1998, Atelos Press published her prose memoir, True. She is a professor in the literature department at the University of California, San Diego, where she teaches writing. Charity Ketz is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Cornell and the recipient of fellowships from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has published a chapbook, Locust in Bloom, through Poet's Corner Press, and has poems forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, New Orleans Review, and Artful Dodge.