Willa Cather - "Oh Pioneers!" is a novel, first published in 1913. The story is set in the fictional town of Hanover, Nebraska, at the turn of the 20th century, and follows the life of Alexandra Bergson, the daughter of Swedish immigrants. After her father's death, Alexandra takes charge of the family farm and works tirelessly to transform it into a prospero ... Show More
Oct 22
Willa Cather – "The Enchanted Bluff" - 1909
🌄 Willa Cather – The Enchanted Bluff (1909) ✨A quiet elegy for youth, memory, and the dreams that fade with time. On a soft Nebraska evening, a group of boys camp beside the river, their laughter rising with the sparks of the fire. One of them — Tip Smith — tells of a faraway me ... Show More
22m 57s
Aug 2024
Episode 599 - Mirana Comstock
This one's all about legacies: familial, literary, cultural & institutional! Mirana Comstock joins the show to celebrate the publication of The Algonquin Round Table: 25 Years with the Legends Who Lunch (Excelsior Editions/SUNY Press), by her grandfather, the late literary lion K ... Show More
1h 20m
Dec 2024
Best of 2024 — Anita Heiss
<p>Reflecting on a year of phenomenal guests, we are bringing you a selection of the Best Conversations of 2024.</p><p>Anita Heiss is a Wiradjuri woman and a prolific author. Her latest novel, Dirrayawadha, brings together Indigenous and colonial history, as well as Wiradjuri lan ... Show More
48m 6s
Jun 2012
Jeanette Winterson - Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is Jeanette Winterson's searing yet ultimately uplifting coming-out, coming-of-age tale, in which a young girl learns to rebel against her fanatical, cult-like upbringing, and set out on her own path in life. To mark thirty years since its publicati ... Show More
53m 30s
Jan 2025
How Award-Winning TV Writer & Novelist Georgia Jeffries Writes
Award-winning TV writer/producer turned novelist Georgia Jeffries spoke with me about why Cagney and Lacey was her film school, teaching screenwriting at USC, and the ghosts, grief, and grievance in her debut novel THE YOUNGER GIRL. Georgia Jeffries is the Emmy-nominated TV write ... Show More
47m 48s
Oct 2022
Erin Keane, "Runaway: Notes on the Myths That Made Me" (Belt Publishing, 2022)
From Erin Keane, editor in chief at Salon, comes Runaway: Notes in the Myths that Made Me (Belt Publishing, 2022), a touching memoir about the search for truths in the stories families tell. In 1970, Erin Keane's mother ran away from home for the first time. She was thirteen year ... Show More
1h 10m
Dec 2021
Siri Hustvedt on the Value in Embracing Ambiguity
<p>When Siri Hustvedt was 12 years old, she began reading 19th-century novels by Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain that were given to her by her Norwegian mother, and soon developed a passion for literature. She found great satisfaction in how these ... Show More
1h 23m
Jul 2021
Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, "Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)
Michel-Rolph Trouillot wrote that “the silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination. It is part of the history of the West and it is likely to persist, even in attenuated form, as long as the history of the West is not retold in wa ... Show More
1h 10m