Ruth Ozeki

Gretel Ehrlich

Ruth Ozeki talks about her acclaimed new novel, A Tale For The Time Being. It’s about a Japanese-American teenager, an Canadian-Japanese writer, and the time-twisting connection between them after the Japanese tsunami. And Gretel Ehrlich discusses her riveting new book, Facing the Wave: A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami.

Ruth Ozeki
Ruth Ozeki’s wonderful novel, A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING, unfolds on multiple layers: a mystery, a speculation on the nature of time, a fascinating lesson in Japanese history and culture, a meditation on the teachings of Zen Buddhism. But above all, it is a terrific yarn with a compelling, funny, and spirited young woman at its center.

Naoki is a teenager set adrift in her native Japan after growing up in California’s Silicon Valley. Her parents struggle with their own demons and denials — too absorbed in their own problems to be there for Naoki as she is brutally bullied at her Japanese school. One who is there for her is her 104 year old great grandmother, a Zen nun with a liberated past.

Junot Diaz said of A Tale For The Time Being:

Here [Ozeki] is at her absolute best — bewitching, intelligent, hilarious, and heartbreaking, often on the same page.

Ruth Ozeki is a Canadian-American novelist, filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priest. She worked in commercial television and media production for over a decade and made several independent films before turning to writing fiction. In addition to A Tale For The Time Being, Ruth Ozeki has written several novels, including All Over Creation and A Year Of Meats and made the film Halving the Bones.

Read an excerpt from A Tale For The Time Being.

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki — Official Book Trailer from Viking Books on Vimeo.

Gretel Ehrlich
When the Japanese tsunami happened in March of 2011, writer Gretel Ehrlich just knew she had to go to Japan to witness and write about the aftermath. Ehrlich’s ties to Japan run deep. She has long been a student of Japanese poetry and other arts, as well as a practitioner of Zen Buddhism since the 1960s.

Ehrlich traveled up the ruined northern coast of Japan, talking to farmers, fishermen, and monks — even to an 84-year old geisha — about their terrible losses and how they have coped.

The result is her latest book, Facing the Wave: A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami, which has been called “A riveting mosaic of reportage and reflection.”

Woven throughout her reportage are poems, lyrical descriptions, and a contemplation of the impermanence of all things. There is also much inspiration to be found in the humor, spirit and resilience of those who have lost so much. Yet the shadow of the still unfolding disaster of the Fukushima nuclear power plant continues to cast a pall over their lives — one neither we nor they can forget.

Gretel Ehrlich is the author of numerous works, including This Cold Heaven, A Match to the Heart, and Islands, the Universe, Home.

Read an excerpt from Facing the Wave.

Barbara Garson

Tia Lessin

Barbara Garson talks about her new book, DOWN THE UP ESCALATOR: How the 99% Live in the Great Recession. And Citizens United gave the 1%, like the Koch Brothers, inordinate influence over our political process. Now they’re moving to take over our media, as well. Filmmaker Tia Lessin discusses the film she co-directed, CITIZEN KOCH, and how its distribution is being threatened by its namesake.

Barbara Garson
Barbara Garson’s new book, Down the Up Escalator: How the 99% Live in the Great Recession, is at times both a touching chronicle of resilience and a frustrating reminder of how dispiriting the growing economic divide in this country can be.
Down the Up Escalator moves away from the dry policy and economic analysis of most books about the Great Recession and is instead rooted in the personal stories of blue-collar and middle class people coping with the very real, every day challenges of the Great Recession.

Garson interviewed hundreds of Americans, across a broad social, political and economic spectrum to get at the heart of what it means, on a practical level, to be living in a world of ever downward mobility. She talked to a Midwestern father and son to capture the fading employment opportunities for blue collar workers, she visits a blind woman in a wheelchair who lost her home to put a human face on predatory lending and follows a group of unemployed professionals in Manhattan to highlight the far reaching devastation of the employment collapse.

Garson adds a light, and achingly real human touch to these stories. It is easy to lose sight of the human toll of the consequences of economic imbalance but Garson reminds us that not only are people just like us hurting in America, they are people who thought they were doing the right thing to get ahead. She makes the imbalance of economic power, wage stagnation, decades of financial industry madness and political inaction relatable, personal and disheartening.

Garson is a playwright, activist and writer. She is perhaps best known for her play, MacBird. This is her fourth book about labor and work in America.

Read an excerpt from Down the Up Escalator 

Tia Lessin
The IRS is being pilloried by the press and pundits for zealously reviewing Tea Party group applications for tax exempt status. At issue are the so-called “social welfare” organizations that sprang up like dandelions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision of 2010.

Is their main mission social welfare? Or is it furthering the right wing extremist political agenda of shrinking government services for the 99%, destroying labor unions, and privatizing schools and other public institutions? It’s hard to know, because Citizens United threw a cloak of secrecy over their operations and funders.

One of the biggest such groups is Americans For Prosperity, founded and funded by coal and oil magnates Charles and David Koch. The Koch brothers have been at the center of a right wing conspiracy to suppress democracy, kill the labor movement — and put the kabosh on climate action. And now they want to make sure you don’t find out about it. Not even on PBS.

Tia Lessin and her co-director Carl Deal premiered their new documentary Citizen Koch at the Sundance Festival. It’s about how Citizens United allowed the Koch brothers and their ilk to influence the political process in Wisconsin. David Koch was the biggest contributor to Governor Scott Walker’s successful effort to hang onto his seat in the face of a recall campaign that stemmed from outrage at his all out attack on public employees.

Lessin and Deal were supposed to air Citizen Koch on PBS’s Independent Lens — they had an agreement with the company that supplies the films for that PBS television series. But something happened on the way to your screen. The company caved to pressure from PBS, which was feeling the heat from the Koch brothers — they’re big contributors to flagship PBS stations.

The crucial question the film poses — and one the Koch brothers don’t want you to ask — is “Who owns democracy in America?”
Citizen Koch was the official selection for the Sundance Film Festival, Full Frame Film Festival, Sarasota Film Festival and Cleveland Film Festival.

Want to help get the film distributed? Take action!

Tia Lessin and Carl Deal previous film, Trouble the Waters, was nominated for an Academy Award. They also co-produced Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11 and Capitalism, A Love Story.

Watch the trailer for Citizen Koch

Rebecca MacKinnon

Alexander Cockburn

We re-play our 2012 interview with Rebecca MacKinnon about her book Consent of the Networked. Then we look back again at Wikileaks and what it means for press freedom: we air our 2010 interviews with the late Alexander Cockburn and with Tim Karr of the organization, Free Press. And finally, we hear a Spring poem from Philip Schultz: Bleeker Street.

Rebecca MacKinnon

We first talked with Rebecca MacKinnon in April of 2012, not long after the US House of Representatives passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA. Then the bill died in the Senate – largely because of privacy concerns.
But it’s b-a-a-ck! It passed the 2013 House and is now moving again to the Senate. If passed, the bill would shield big companies that turn over private information to the government. And with the Justice Department overstepping its bounds by going after the email contacts and cell phone records of reporters, not to mention its relentless pursuit of Julian Assange, and prosecution of whisteblowers, our digital rights, privacy and press freedom are coming under threat all at the same time.

Alexander Cockburn and Tim Karr

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is still holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and Bradley Manning is still under threat of spending the rest of his life in jail. As reported in Huffington Post last week, “A coalition of activists and journalists, including Assange, filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense and the military judge overseeing the case of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning. The suit aims to open up access to the military trial, in which Manning is fighting to avoid a life sentence after admitting to leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents to Wikileaks.”

In 2010, we talked with the late great journalist Alexander Coburn about the significance of Wikileaks for press freedom and with Tim Karr, spokesperson for the organization, Free Press.

Marisa Silver

Jess Walter

Marisa Silver talks about her acclaimed new novel, MARY COIN. It’s about a famous photograph of a migrant worker taken during the Great Depression. And Jess Walter discusses his collection of short stories set during the Great Recession, WE LIVE IN WATER.

Marisa Silver
When Francesca was growing up, one of her favorite books was the collection of photographs, The Family of Man — and one of her favorite photos in the book was Dorothea Lange’s iconic portrait, “Migrant Mother.” She would pore over this photo, wondering “who was this person?” “What was she thinking, as she gazed with such intensity off to the left of the camera?”

Well, we can never know. That’s something the subject of the photo, Florence Owens Thompson, didn’t explain when she came forth years later to complain to Dorothea Lange about the notoriety the photographer had brought her.

But in her new novel, MARY COIN, Marisa Silver has fashioned a sort of answer — albeit a fictional one.

In a fascinating reinvention, Silver creates a new story about the photographer and her subject, to explore the distance between the truth and our interpretation of it. It’s also a story about the grit and endurance of the human spirit in hard times. And there’s another story woven into the book — that of a contemporary academic researching the photograph who finds out that his relationship to the two women is anything but academic.

Marisa Silver is the author of several novels and a collection of short stories. We’ve spoken to her previously about her novel THE GOD OF WAR and her story collection, Alone With You.
Read an excerpt from Mary Coin

Jess Walter
Jess Walter’s last book was Beautiful Ruins, which took as its subjects the privileged — screen actors, writers and those who cater to them. But Jess Walter himself came from a working class family in the Pacific Northwest. His wonderful new collection of stories set in that region, WE LIVE IN WATER, situates itself squarely within the realm of those who struggle to survive in America’s Great Recession.

To quote from the book’s description: the “stories in We Live in Water range from comic tales of love to social satire and suspenseful crime fiction. This is a world of lost fathers and redemptive con men, of personal struggles and diminished dreams.”

Jess Walter is the author of six novels. He was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award for The Zero and winner of the 2005 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Citizen Vince.
Read an excerpt from one of the stories in We Live In Water, “Don’t Eat Cat”

Chaz Nielsen, left; Pierre Rouzier, right

Roberta Olsen

Curator Roberta Olson talks about her book and the New York Historical Society exhibition, AUDUBON’S AVIARY. It’s about the original watercolors for Audubon’s The Birds of America.

And a new bilingual children’s book takes aim at childhood obesity. Chaz Nielsen talks about HENRY GETS MOVING.

Roberta J. M. Olsen

John Jay Audubon was one of the most colorful and fascinating figures in American history. The illegitimate child of merchant marine captain, he was born on his father’s sugar plantation in Haiti, moved to France as a child, and was given a a superb classical education. Then he came to America — and reinvented himself as a buckskin-wearing naturalist, ornithologist and, above all, artist. He traveled throughout the new nation documenting it abundant bird life in magnificent drawings and paintings that he sold on a subscription basis to an eager public.

He laid the basis for the American conservation movement that would arise around the turn of the next century and remains an inspiration to nature lovers and art lovers everywhere.

The full collection of 435 watercolors he prepared for his world renowned elephant folio of engravings, The Birds of America, is housed in the New York Historical Society. This Spring, the museum has put on an exhibition of the water colors, along with other works by Audubon: Audubon’s Aviary, The Complete Flock. It’s the first part of three exhibitions spanning the water colors, to be presented over a three-year period.

The richly illustrated book, Audubon’s Aviary: The Original Watercolors for The Birds of America (Skira Rizzoli, 2012), accompanies the exhibition, with text written by museum curator Roberta Olson. The book is as spectacular as the exhibit and Olson’s text is a delight to read.

Roberta Olson is Curator of Drawings at the New York Historical Society. The exhibit, Audubon’s Aviary, Part One of the Complete Flock, is open until May 19. Olson’s authorship of Audubon’s Aviary: The Original Watercolors for “The Birds of America was honored with the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) 2012 Award for Excellence.

Chaz Nielsen
In 2010, more than one third of children and adolescents were overweight or obese. Now a new children’s book hope to spark a community movement to fight childhood obesity — by using a cute little hamster named Henry to get kids moving more and eating better.

Henry Gets Moving takes a community-based approach to getting kids involved in fighting obesity. Co-author Chaz Nielsen spoke to Francesca about the book and planned sequels. He wrote Henry Gets Moving with Dr. Pierre Rouzier, Pierre Rouzier (fils) and illustrator Catherine Lazar Odel.

Brian Kitely

Tim Brennan

In this fourth episode of our Writers Voice special series, The River Runs Through Us, Brian Kitely talks about THE RIVER GODS, his novel-in-vignettes of Northampton, Massachusetts from its founding to today; Native American scholar Marge Bruchac tells us about the original inhabitants of the Valley, and Pioneer Valley Planning Commission director Tim Brennan discusses the history and future of the Connecticut River in Massachusetts.

Brian Kitely

In the local parlance of western Massachusetts, the phrase “The River Gods” refers to the group of powerful men who held sway over the business and political life of the Connecticut River Valley in the 17th and 18th centuries. Northampton was one of those towns and it’s the setting for my guest Brian Kitely’s novel, THE RIVER GODS.

Written in a series of short vignettes, the novel shifts back and forth in time to reveal glimpses of the town’s history, as well as the personal history of the author himself. The reader meets the fiery preacher Jonathan Edwards, Sojourner Truth and other notable individuals from Northampton’s history — including some surprises like German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. We originally spoke to him several years ago about The River Gods, but called him again for an interview redux for the River Runs Through Us series.

Brian Kitely teaches creative writing at the University of Denver. In addition to THE RIVER GODS, he is the author of two other novels, STILL LIFE WITH INSECTS and I KNOW MANY SONGS, BUT I CANNOT SING, as well as two books of writing exercises.

Marge Bruchac

A few years ago in the dead of winter, Abenaki storyteller and scholar Marge Bruchac took Francesca on a fascinating tour of what might be termed “native Northampton:” the places and traces where the native Algonquian tribes of the region made their home at the great bend of the Connecticut River where later the English colonists founded Northampton. The Indians called it, variously, Nonotuck or Norwottuck. We re-air an excerpt from that tour for this episode of The River Runs Through Us.

Marge Bruchac is co-author of the book 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving, published in 2001.

Tim Brennan, Pioneer Valley Planning Commission
Throughout this series we’ve talked to writers, historians and sociologists about the connection that people have had with the Connecticut River in the past.

We’ve heard how the river was influential in spreading ideas of freedom and spirituality, as well as serving as the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution and a model for middle class communities. But those communities’ connection to the Connecticut River doesn’t just exist in the past; the River continues to be a living, vital resource in their present lives as well. In fact, for them, the River may be the most important economic resource of the next 50 years.

If the Connecticut River Valley is to have a viable economic future, it needs to base it on green energy and technology. For that, it needs the power, development and economic activity that the only the River can provide.
But there are daunting challenges in making that future happen: environmental degradation, poorly planned housing and manufacturing development and the loss of federal government investment in the River make it difficult to fully realize the economic potential of the River.

Yet, there are bright spots. The city of Holyoke is now using the River to generate clean hydro-power for the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center, a 180 million dollar investment by a consortium of universities to create a high tech center in the city’s ailing post-industrial economy. And several River communities including Springfield, Northampton, Agawam, Hadley, Amherst and Chicopee have banded together to create an interconnected Connecticut River Bikeway and Rail Trail to increase recreational activity on the River.

Much work remains to be done if the Connecticut River is going to realize its economic potential in a sustainable way that connects communities to each other and the River.

Timothy Brennan, Executive Director of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, is helping to lead and shape much of that work. The Commission is an organization of 43 cities along the Connecticut River charged with coordinating and encouraging cooperation between business, government and the citizens on issues related to the Pioneer Valley.
For the last twenty-five years, Brennan and the PVPC have worked to clean up the River in order maximize its economic potential. WV associate producer talked with Brennan about the River’s potential, the challenges its communities face and how something as simple as a bike path can create community, economic development and environmental sustainability.

WV special series The River Runs Through Us is funded by a grant from Mass Humanities and by contributers to our Kickstarter campaigns.

Kerry Buckley of Historic Northampton provides sage historical advice.

Katharine Applegate

Amy Larkin

Amy Larkin discusses her terrific new book, ENVIRONMENTAL DEBT: The Hidden Costs of a Changing Global Economy. And Katharine Applegate talks about her new novel for kids of all ages, THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN. Written in the poignant voice of a gorilla, it’s based on the true story of a gorilla held captive for thirty years in a suburban mall.

Amy Larkin

It’s forty three years since the first Earth Day was celebrated April 22 1970 — and the news isn’t good. 2012 was the hottest year on record; half of all species are on target for going extinct, clean water, air and soil is getting scarcer. Everywhere we look, the natural systems we depend on are falling apart. Yet conventional political wisdom says we can’t do anything about it because it will be too costly for business, government and jobs.

Our entire economy is based on cheap, easy and convenient. But how cheap is it really? Take coal, the cheapest and most polluting of the fossil fuels. A recent study showed, if the price of coal was set to include its environmental and health cost, it would easily double. In other words, the coal companies are racking up an environmental debt equal to their revenues — only they aren’t on the hook for the debt; we are.

Amy Larkin’s terrific new book, ENVIRONMENTAL DEBT lays out the case for tackling that debt now — in effect, she says, we need to start paying more for pollution, so that we can pay less in the hidden costs now and in the future. And the book explodes the myth of the contradiction between environmental protection and business. She says we can have a prosperous economy and a clean environment — she calls it the Nature Means Business model. But the corollary is also true — no Nature, no Business.

Amy Larkin is a longterm environmental activist who was on the Board of Greenpeace and served as director of Greenpeace Solutions, bringing activists and business together to solve environmental problems. She blogs at Huffington Post.

Katharine Applegate
As mentioned above, half of all species on the planet face extinction — among them our close relative, the magnificent lowland gorilla. But Katharine Applegate has chosen to write her latest novel not about gorillas in the wild, but about one particular gorilla who lives behind bars in a suburban mall. THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN is told from the point of view of the title character — with his often poignant, funny, and wise observations about gorillahood, humanity, art and the love between different species, including humans and other animals.

Applegate’s book is based on a real Ivan the gorilla — who was taken from the wild in Africa and brought to a strip mall in Tacoma Washington, where he lived alone in a cage for 30 years until he was moved to a modern zoo. But fiction becomes in Applegate’s hands a means of exploring our relationship to animals and the impact we have on the animal world. And although The One And Only Ivan is nominally written for children, it is a deeply affecting book that can be read for pleasure by all ages.

Katharine Applegate is the author of numerous books for children and young adults, including The Buffalo Storm, Roscoe Riley Rules and Animorphs (which she wrote with her husband, Michael Grant.) Her novel Home of the Brave was awarded the 2008 Golden Kite Award for Best Fiction.

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Patricia Klindienst

Rebecca Thistlethwaite

Patricia Klindienst talks about her book, THE EARTH KNOWS MY NAME: Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans. (Encore interview.) And then, America needs more farmers — and more young people are showing up to fill that need. Farmer and author Rebecca Thistlethwaite joins us in the second half of our show to talk about how sustainability-minded farmers can survive and thrive in farming today. Her book is FARMS WITH A FUTURE: Creating and Growing a Sustainable Farm Business.

Patricia Klindienst

In her book, The Earth Knows My Name, Patricia Klindienst asks why in a typical gardening book, gardening is presented as the province of the privileged and the white. She says we are a democracy of gardeners, yet, with few exceptions, garden writing tends to exclude the stories of the ethnic peoples who have shaped our landscape for centuries. As a result the idea of the garden has been stripped of its cultural weight.

The Earth Knows My Name speaks directly to this issue, exploring the deeper implications of what it means to cultivate a garden and grow one’s own food. The gardens featured in the book have all been fashioned by people who are usually thought of as other Americans: Native Americans, immigrants and ethnic peoples who were here long before our national boundaries were drawn. All these gardeners straddle two cultures, mainstream America and their culture of origin.

We spoke with Klindienst in 2007. She won the 2007 American Book Award for The Earth Knows My Name.

Listen to our full hour 2007 interview with Klindienst

Rebecca Thistlethwaite
Only about 2% of Americans grow food for a living, down from nearly 80% a hundred years ago. It’s a tough life — farmers face long hours, poor working conditions, debt, high prices of fuel and feed and the uncertainties of an increasingly chaotic climate.

Yet a growing cohort of young Americans is taking up farming with enthusiasm. They are heartened by the growth of the consumer movement for local food — locally grown food sales topped around $7 billion by the end of 2011. But many, if not most, new farmers have little experience to draw on to help them stay in business. Few come from farming families themselves.

That’s a problem Rebecca Thistlethwaite addresses in her book, Farms with a Future: Creating and Growing a Sustainable Farm Business. It’s written for small to mid-scale farmers, but we all have a stake in local agriculture, so, even if you just want to eat the produce, not grow it, it’s worthwhile knowing a little more about what it takes.

Rebecca Thistlethwaite and her husband raised organic, pastured livestock and poultry in their previous farm, TLC Ranch in Watsonville, CA. Then they took a one-year sabbatical and traveled across the U. S. to live and work alongside some of the nation’s most innovative farmers. They learned some of their best practices, like adding value to farm products, avoiding debt by building business slowly, using social networking for marketing, developing pre-sold distribution networks, and treating workers well.

Anthony Lewis

Edward Ball

The late Anthony Lewis on his “biography of the First Amendment,” Freedom for the Thought That We Hate. Lewis died on March 25, 2013. And Edward Ball talks with Drew Adamek about his book, The Inventor and the Tycoon. It’s about how modern media were born out of an unlikely partnership between a tycoon and an inventor who was a murderer.

THANK YOU From Writers Voice Hosts Drew Adamek and Francesca Rheannon

We want to send a big shout out of thanks to all who sent in donations to our Kickstarter Campaign to support our special series, The River Runs Through Us. We’re happy to report we exceeded our goal and have been able to heave a huge sigh of relief. Thanks SO much — and tune in to our next episode of The River Runs Through Us, coming up next week on WV. We’ll be listing our supporters on this website in the coming weeks.

Anthony Lewis 
When we first spoke with journalist and New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis in 2008 about his “biography of the first amendment,” Freedom for the Thought That We Hate, George Bush was still president. Concern over the erosion of free speech was one of the reasons Lewis wrote his book,.

When constitutional lawyer Barack Obama was elected, many thought the erosion would end. But Obama’s justice department has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other administrations put together — most notable has been the Administration’s ferocious treatment of Bradley Manning. The policy has sent a chill down the spines of investigative journalists and called into question the president’s commitment to protect the First Amendment.

Anthony Lewis died on March 25 at the age of 85, after a long, Pulitzer Prize-winning career exploring civil liberties, the Supreme Court, and other legal issues.

Edward Ball

The Inventor and The Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and The Birth of Moving Pictures by historian Edward Ball is the story of the strange partnership that helped create our media saturated culture.

Ball chronicles the story of Leland Stanford, railroad magnate, governor of California and founder of Stanford University, and Edward Muybridge, itinerant photographer, artist and murderer as they partner to create the first moving images and projectors in the 1870s. Their innovation centers on a single question: do all four hooves leave the ground when a horse trots?

Stanford owned an enormous stable of race horses and wanted to know the answer to that question. He hired the photographer Muybridge to create a photo system that could capture a horse in motion. Muybridge constructed a complex system of twenty-four electromagnetically charged cameras that, for the first time, froze the motion of a horse over a considerable distance.

However, just as the two men began working together, Muybridge discovered that his wife was having an affair and he murdered her lover. His trial was covered nationally by telegraph and is one of the first national crime sensations. He was acquitted and then changed the American media landscape forever.

He took the images of the trotting horse and created a projector that showed moving images — for the first time in history — to an audience in Leland Stanford’s home. Within twenty years of that exhibition, the modern image-based media was born. The Inventor and the Tycoon is a tale of innovation, intrigue, friendship and betrayal. Edward Ball weaves a complex yet engaging tale that covers the history of “rough justice” in the frontier, American photography, the creation of the western railroads and most importantly, the birth of modern media.

Lois Leveen

Eve LaPlante

Lois Leveen talks about the remarkable true story of Mary Bowser, a freed slave who became a Union spy right inside the Confederate White House. Her acclaimed new novel, THE SECRETS OF MARY BOWSER, is based on it. And Eve LaPlante talks about her terrific new book, MARMEE AND LOUISA. It’s about the powerful relationship between Louisa May Alcott and her mother Abigail.

 Lois Leveen

We’re coming to the end of Women’s History Month, following hard on the heels of Black History Month. A new novel based on the remarkable true story of Mary Bowser is a fitting story to mark both. Bowser was freed as a young girl by the Abolitionist daughter of her owners, Bet van Lew, given an education in Philadelphia, and then she returned to the South to become a spy for the Union Army during the Civil War.

This incredible story is fictionalized in the new novel The Secrets of Mary Bowser. Author Lois Leveen weaves history and speculation together into a fascinating narrative exploring slavery, the Civil War — and the relationship between two remarkable and courageous women: Mary Bowser and Bet van Lew.

Leveen has taught English literature at UCLA and Reed College. She is a regular contributor to Disunion, the New York Times series about the Civil War.

Read an excerpt from THE SECRETS OF MARY BOWSER

Eve LaPlante

Like perhaps millions of other girls before her, Francesca loved reading Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. She identified with Jo March and thrilled to her struggle to transcend the restrictive notions about women in 19th century America — or twentieth century America, for that matter. What she didn’t know was how much Louisa May Alcott’s own family was the model for her classic bestseller — sometimes in an idealized version, as with the character of Jo and her sisters’ father. But the portrayal of the girls’ mother Marmee was truer than anyone knew — until now.

That’s because Eve LaPlante’s new book, Marmee and Louisa reveals for the first time the intense and close personal relationship between Louisa May Alcott and her mother Abigail — and yes, she did call her mother Marmee.

Scholars and authors have long focussed on Alcott’s relationship to her father — almost certainly because plenty of documentary evidence of that relationship survives. Many of her mother’s papers were destroyed after her death. But as Abigail May Alcott’s great niece, LaPlante had access to a cache of previously unexamined family papers.

They led her to a new understanding of the mother-daughter bond between Abigail and Louisa — and the profound influence of that relationship on Louisa’s work and her ideas about women’s rights and slavery. Eve LaPlante’s fascinating dual biography breaks new ground in a gripping and sensitive narrative that reveals not only the past, but how the struggles of yesterday’s women continue to hold much relevance to our lives today.

Eve LaPlante is the author of several other nonfiction books, including American Jezebel, about her ancestor Anne Hutchinson, and Salem Witch Judge, about another ancestor who repented of his role in the Salem witch trials and became an abolitionist and feminist.

Marmee and Louisa is being released with a companion volume of Abigail May Alcott’s writing, MY HEART IS BOUNDLESS.

Read an excerpt from Marmee and Louisa

Les Leopold

Helaine Olen

Helaine Olen talks about her exposé of the personal finance industry, POUND FOOLISH: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry and Les Leopold discusses his new book HOW TO MAKE A MILLION DOLLARS AN HOUR: Why Hedge Funds Get Away with Siphoning Off America’s Wealth.

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Helaine Olen
When the market tanked in 2009, millions of Americans saw their retirement funds go up in smoke. It wasn’t supposed to happen — for years, we were told to expect double digit returns on our investments forever. Wall Street used to be the playground exclusively of the rich, but as wages stagnated and the old style pension went the way of the Dodo, more and more Americans turned to the personal finance industry for solutions to financial insecurity. It hasn’t turned out so well.

In Pound Foolish, journalist Helaine Olen exposes the hype and hokum the personal finance industry has perpetuated. She shows that while most Americans believe their financial fate is in their own hands, the deck has been stacked against them.

Olen writes the blog Where Life Meets Money on Forbes.com. She was the former writer of the Money Makeover feature in The LA Times and has also written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, BusinessWeek, and AlterNet.org., among others.

Read an excerpt from Pound Foolish

Les Leopold

Wanna make a million bucks an hour? Some people make that and more — hedge fund managers. The top manager earned $2.4 million per hour in 2010. How long would it take you to make that on your present rate of earnings? Probably decades.
How do they do that? Where does all that money come from? It turns out much of the wealth sloshing around at the tippy top has actually come from the 99.9 percent below.

Les Leopold’s new book, How To Make A Million Dollars An Hour, reveals the links between the obscene levels of wealth made by hedge fund managers and such financial crises as the European sovereign debt crisis and the mortgage meltdown. He shows how hedge funds bet against investors and won, beggaring people, school districts, unions and municipal governments — all so some people can pull down millions of dollars per hour.

Leopold’s last book was the acclaimed LOOTING OF AMERICA. He’s executive director of the Labor Institute and Public Health Institute in New York and also writes for AlterNet.

Listen to the entire interview with Les Leopold

Ever since I discovered Shakespeare’s historical plays at age 11, I’ve been fascinated by the Plantagenets, the dynasty of English/Norman kings who counted among their number some of the greatest scoundrels and most illustrious monarchs (some of them one and the same) England has ever known.

Alas, Dan Jones’ The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England does not include my own personal favorite Shakespearean monarchs, Henry V and Richard III. But then that hardly matters, for this sweeping 300 year history kept me on the edge of my seat as I followed the royal soap operas played out from Henry II, through Richard I (the Lionheart) and bad King John to Richard II (also the star of a Shakespeare play, but a rather mediocre one.)

The reader is prompted throughout to contemplate the fickle finger of Fate (or Karma) as monarchs triumph, only to crash and burn. Sometimes, they are able to hoist their luck up Fortune’s Wheel again, but dastardly deeds, cruel betrayals by family and friends, internecine wars — in short, all the “slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune” — are unloosed on nearly all  Jones’ primary subjects in the course of their eventful lives, often by their own actions. King Lear hath no tragic chops over Richard II, whose wife and sons tried to depose him.

But despite the tragic — and sometimes comic — elements of their history, The Plantagenets also had a profound effect on English law and custom that continues to reverberate down to our present time, as Jones reveals: the creation of the Magna Carta, for example, with its establishment of rights of the governed. As President Obama erodes the right of habeus corpus with his “targeted” killings of American citizens, we would do well to contemplate with what copious amounts of blood this right was birthed and defended over the past 800 years. And the penchant for wars in the Middle East (the Crusades then, our adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq now) has been devastating for the balance sheets of rulers from Henry II to President Bush II and the current US administration.

In The Plantagenets, Jones gives the reader many rip-roaring yarns, a good lesson in history, and much food for thought about current events.

Russ Kick

Louise Erdrich

Russ Kick, editor of The Graphic Canon, talks about the two volume set of the western world’s greatest literature, rendered in graphic novel form. And Louise Erdrich talks about her novel The Round House. It’s about the brutal rape and beating of a Native American woman and her struggle for justice against her non-native perpetrator.

Russ Kick

THE GRAPHIC CANON: The World’s Great Literature as Comics and Visuals (Seven Stories Press) is a three volume set of some of humanities greatest stories, illustrated by over two hundred graphic, comic and illustrative artists.  In it, each of the selected stories of the canon are illustrated by a different artist. This gives the reader literally hundreds of new ways of looking at familiar stories.  The collection is a striking and enjoyable testament to the combined storytelling power of visual art and written literature that will take readers years to truly enjoy and understand.

Starting with the story of Gilgamesh in Volume One and ending with a selection from David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” in Volume Three, the graphic canon is a fascinating and beautiful collection, with a wide variety of artistic and storytelling styles.  But the anthology is different from most literary collections in that it offers an exceptional range of interpretations of unexpected works, like the only known Mayan play, Darwin’s Origin of Species and The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

The graphic canon aims to be a repository of not only humanity’s most important and timeless stories, but as an encyclopedia of different artistic styles.  Contributors include famous comic and graphic artists like Will Eisner, Robert Crumb and Gris Grimly.

Editor Russ Kick, who conceived, gathered and assembled the massive collection, is a writer, editor and publisher.  The first two volumes have been released and the third and final book is slated for a May release.

Louise Erdrich

On March 7, 2013 President Obama signed a re-authorization of the Violence Against Women’s Act. At his side was the original author of the Act, as passed in 1994 – Joe Biden. The re-authorization did not come easy – last year, Republicans in the House took out certain protections to gay couples and Native American women that were in the Senate version of the bill. But finally in February, a minority of House Republicans joined Democrats to adopt the Senate version and the Act passed by a vote of 286 to 138.

Indigenous women in the US experience some of the highest rates of sexual assault in the country. Almost half of all Native American women have been raped, beaten, or stalked by an intimate partner; one in three will be raped in their lifetime; and 86% of the assaults on them are committed by non-native men. Now, For the first time, the law closes the loophole that exempted non-native perpetrators from tribal jurisdiction.

Louise Erdrich’s latest novel The Round House covers some of this territory. It’s the story of a brutal rape of a Native American woman — and how the victim’s young son takes on the task of bringing his mother’s assailant to justice. I spoke with Erdrich in 2012. Read here for more information about the book.

And that seems to hold for personal history as well as big picture social, political and national histories. The lover you remember so fondly becomes a bitter pill after they marry your best friend; the heroic war protestor becomes a traitor to the cause when a secret relationship with the FBI is uncovered; the great writer is vilified with the discovery of plagarism.

So how does one go about comprehending a history, both personal and national, that is constantly shifting with the vagaries of time, distance, and circumstance? How can you be certain of what really happened, even in your own life, when how you interpret the past is dependent of where you are standing in the present?

Ismail Kadare examines this question in his novel, The Fall of The Stone City with a biting satirical wit and an aching sadness. Out for the first time in English translation, the novel is an complicated intellectual treat, a bitingly funny satire and a heartbreaking tragedy at all once. Ismail Kadare, an Albanian, is considered one of Europe’s best writers and his work has won the Man Booker prize and he has been a Nobel candidate several times.

The book opens on the small Albanian town of Gjirokaster in 1943 as it prepares for the Nazi invasion from Greece after the capitulation of the occupying Italians. Gjirokaster is a provincial, medieval town closed up against its neighbors and isolated by a sense of nationalistic entitlement. The Germans approach the main gates of the walled city and are fired upon by unknown assaillaints.

In retaliation, the Germans prepare a bombing campaign but just as it begins, a white flag is seen over the town. The Germans stop the bombardment but storm the town and take 100 prisoners, threatening execution if the assailants aren’t identified.

Just as the Germans are rounding up prisoners, a strange scene unfolds in the town square. One of the town’s most prominent citizens, Dr. Gurameto, meets with the German commander and invites him to dinner. It seems as if the German Colonel and Dr. Gurameto were college roommates and long lost friends.

Dr. Gurameto cuts a strange figure. Aloof, rigid and highly accomplished, he is not the only Dr. Gurameto in town. The first is known as big Dr. Gurameto while the another, unrelated Dr. Gurameto, known as the little Dr. Gurameto. Before the Germans invaded, the favorite sport of the town was to compare the two doctors on their perceived merits and. Half of the town favors the Big Dr. Gurameto and half the little Dr. Gurameto; depending on the day’s events one camp triumphs over the other in the war of words.

The dinner with the German colonel seems to seal the town in Big Dr. Gurameto’s favor. Over the course of the dinner, which is shrouded in mystery, the Germans slowly release all 100 prisoners, including the town’s most prominent Jew. Based on an agreement that no party understands or shares, the Germans agree to let Gjirokaster be left unharmed.

And there Kadare sets up his novel. There are three unkowns that the book sets out to solve: who waved the white flag, who fired on the Germans and what really happened at the dinner at Dr. Gurameto’s house?

And the answers change throughout the book depending on how and where one ponders them. The book follows Dr. Gurameto and the town for ten years, into the rot of communist rule to trace the evolving understanding of what happened so many years ago.
During the German occupation, the Albanian nationalists are convinced the communists are the culprits and after the communists take power, the nationalists are to blame. All of the town’s sacred cows fall from grace as Kadare , with keen satire, skewers the blind institutional certainty and petty jealousies that shape history.

Dr. Gurameto is first hailed as a hero but as communist revisionism and paranio slowly take over he is slowly turned into a villain and arrested as part of a plot to kill Stalin. It is in the final third of the book, during his interrogation that Kadare reveals the secrets of the dinner.

Answering the question of what exactly happened at the dinner would ruin the novel, so I will leave it at this: what happens to Dr. Gurameto in his past and in his present are shocking and grievous, both unbelievable and unjust. In an amazing feat of intellectual and narrative dexterity, Kadare takes the ironies of fate, intertwines them with the fickle nature of self-protective narratives and smashes them on the impersonal destructiveness of bureaucratic institituions.

But more than the story of Dr. Gurameto, The Fall of The Stone City, is a parable for the difficulty with reconciling Albania’s complicated political and social history. For those interested in untangling history generally, and Balkan history specifically, there can be no more tragic and insightful place to start than The Fall of the Stone City.

— Drew Adamek

Stuart Horwitz

Rajesh Paramaswaren

Stuart Horwitz talks about his book architecture method of organizing and revising any manuscript. His book is BLUEPRINT YOUR BESTSELLER. Then Rajesh Parameswaren discusses his new story collection, I AM AN EXECUTIONER: LOVE STORIES; finally, Drew Adamek reviews Ismail Kadare’s The Fall of the Stone City.

Stuart Horwitz
It’s one of the most frustrating parts of writing — how to structure and organize all the different elements of a book, or even an article, short story or script. How to get a plot line that holds suspense, or weave together different ideas to make one overarching theme that makes your work an integral whole? In other words, how to construct your writing project as a house that is something both you and the reader will enjoy living in?

Stuart Horwitz has written a book designed to help you do just that, Blueprint Your Bestseller: Organize and Revise Any Manuscript with the Book Architecture Method. He devised his “book architecture” method over his years as an editor, book coach and ghostwriter. In his book, Horvitz creates an approach he says can help any writer of any genre get his manuscript into polished form.

Stuart Horwitz is an award-winning essayist and poet. He has taught writing at Grub Street of Boston and Brown University and consults with writers through the company he founded, Book Architecture. You can find out more about his method at www.bookarchitecture.com/

Rajesh Parameswaren
Rajesh Parameswaran’s debut short story collection, I Am An Executioner, is a darkly funny and sometimes harrowing exploration of the power of love. The nine stories in this collection range from a tiger who discovers the destructive power of love to an executioner trying to get his new bride to understand his job to an immigrant women coping with the death of her husband on Thanksgiving to an alien father trying to raise a teenage daughter on an alien planet hundreds of years in the future.

It’s always difficult to say what a short story collection is “about” because there are so many stories and narratives contained within but I Am An Executioner is about the most basic concerns that we all share. Richly written with humor and a deep humanity, this collection looks at what it means to love and to be concerned with the fraility of human connection. Parameswaran creates a world in which the reader both sympathizes with animals, killers, and aliens and yet doesn’t really notice that they are aliens or animals.

It is a testament to Parameswaran’s skill as a writer that what his characters experience is relatable and touching for the reader, no matter who or what they are. It is not the characters’ differences from the reader, of which there are many, that carry this collection but the commonalities of experience that runs through each of these stories.

Parameswaran’s stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Granta and his story, “The Strange Career of Dr. Raju Gopolarajan” won a National Magazine Award. I Am An Executioner is his debut collection. He is currently working on his first novel.

Drew Adamek reviews The Fall of the Stone City, by Ismail Kadare

History is a quirky thing. Understanding history is a lot like the parable of the blind men and the elephant: depending on your vantage point, history can be a victory, a defeat, a holocaust or a glorious defense of the homeland.

And that seems to hold for personal history as well as big picture social, political and national histories. The lover you remember so fondly becomes a bitter pill after they marry your best friend; the heroic war protestor becomes a traitor to the cause when a secret relationship with the FBI is uncovered; the great writer is vilified with the discovery of plagarism.

So how does one go about comprehending a history, both personal and national, that is constantly shifting with the vagaries of time, distance, and circumstance? How can you be certain of what really happened, even in your own life, when how you interpret the past is dependent of where you are standing in the present?

Ismail Kadare examines this question in his novel, “The Fall of The Stone City” with a biting satirical wit and an aching sadness. Out for the first time in English translation, the novel is an complicated intellectual treat, a bitingly funny satire and a heartbreaking tragedy at all once. Ismail Kadare, an Albanian, is considered one of Europe’s best writers and his work has won the Man Booker prize and he has been a Nobel candidate several times.

The book opens on the small Albanian town of Gjirokaster in 1943 as it prepares for the Nazi invasion from Greece after the capitulation of the occupying Italians. Gjirokaster is a provincial, medieval town closed up against its neighbors and isolated by a sense of nationalistic entitlement. The Germans approach the main gates of the walled city and are fired upon by unknown assaillaints.

In retaliation, the Germans prepare a bombing campaign but just as it begins, a white flag is seen over the town. The Germans stop the bombardment but storm the town and take 100 prisoners, threatening execution if the assailants aren’t identified.

Just as the Germans are rounding up prisoners, a strange scene unfolds in the town square. One of the town’s most prominent citizens, Dr. Gurameto, meets with the German commander and invites him to dinner. It seems as if the German Colonel and Dr. Gurameto were college roommates and long lost friends.

Dr. Gurameto cuts a strange figure. Aloof, rigid and highly accomplished, he is not the only Dr. Gurameto in town. The first is known as big Dr. Gurameto while the another, unrelated Dr. Gurameto, known as the little Dr. Gurameto. Before the Germans invaded, the favorite sport of the town was to compare the two doctors on their perceived merits and. Half of the town favors the Big Dr. Gurameto and half the little Dr. Gurameto; depending on the day’s events one camp triumphs over the other in the war of words.

The dinner with the German colonel seems to seal the town in Big Dr. Gurameto’s favor. Over the course of the dinner, which is shrouded in mystery, the Germans slowly release all 100 prisoners, including the town’s most prominent Jew. Based on an agreement that no party understands or shares, the Germans agree to let Gjirokaster be left unharmed.

And there Kadare sets up his novel. There are three unkowns that the book sets out to solve: who waved the white flag, who fired on the Germans and what really happened at the dinner at Dr. Gurameto’s house?

And the answers change throughout the book depending on how and where one ponders them. The book follows Dr. Gurameto and the town for ten years, into the rot of communist rule to trace the evolving understanding of what happened so many years ago.
During the German occupation, the Albanian nationalists are convinced the communists are the culprits and after the communists take power, the nationalists are to blame. All of the town’s sacred cows fall from grace as Kadare , with keen satire, skewers the blind institutional certainty and petty jealousies that shape history.

Dr. Gurameto is first hailed as a hero but as communist revisionism and paranio slowly take over he is slowly turned into a villain and arrested as part of a plot to kill Stalin. It is in the final third of the book, during his interrogation that Kadare reveals the secrets of the dinner.

Answering the question of what exactly happened at the dinner would ruin the novel, so I will leave it at this: what happens to Dr. Gurameto in his past and in his present are shocking and grievous, both unbelievable and unjust. In an amazing feat of intellectual and narrative dexterity, Kadare takes the ironies of fate, intertwines them with the fickle nature of self-protective narratives and smashes them on the impersonal destructiveness of bureaucratic institituions.

But more than the story of Dr. Gurameto, The Fall of The Stone City is a parable for the difficulty with reconciling Albania’s complicated political and social history. For those interested in untangling history generally, and Balkan history specifically, there can be no more tragic and insightful place to start than The Fall of the Stone City.

George Saunders

Jennifer Haigh

George Saunders talks about his acclaimed new short story collection, TENTH OF DECEMBER. And Jennifer Haigh discusses her new collection, NEWS FROM HEAVEN: The Bakerton Stories. 

George Saunders

George Saunders is a giant of American fiction. A McAurthur fellow, he’s won the National magazine award for fiction four times and his work is widely anthologized. The New York Times has called him the writer for our time.

In his work, Saunders masterfully blends genres and expertly captures the cadences and nuances of language to create characters that repel and attract in equal measure. He combines shock, dismay and disgust with wit, sensitivity and pitch perfect voice with a deft touch. But for all of its intellectual and emotional power, the stories are first and foremost funny and rich with humanity. It is almost impossible to read a George Saunders story without being moved.

The bulk of Saunder’s writing takes the short story form although he has also published a novella called the “The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil”, a children’s book called “The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip” and an essay collection called “The Brain Dead Megaphone.”

His new book, TENTH OF DECEMBER, is his fourth collection of short stories. Called “the best book you’ll read this year”, this deeply moving, yet nervously dark, collection of ten stories, most of which first appeared in the New Yorker, is a wide-ranging indictment of our consumer culture and a chronicle of disconnected loneliness filled with unforgettable and expertly drawn characters.

The stories range from “Victory Lap”, in which a pair of socially disparate teenagers confront a sudden act of violence, to “Home” in which a soldier who committed war crimes in Iraq and is suffering from PTSD returns home to find that his domestic situation pushes him to the brink. The title story is about how a misfit ten-year old boy and an older man dying of cancer face their deaths in a frozen forest preserve.

George Saunders spoke with WV associate producer Drew Adamek about his new collection and why the short story is such a powerful storytelling tool for him.

Read Saunders’ story, “The Semplica-Girl Diaries“

Jennifer Haigh
Jennifer Haigh is one of a few American contemporary novelists (Russell Banks and Jess Walter are others) who plumb the rich vein of stories that lie within the lives of ordinary working people — those who have been so invisible for the most part in fiction, on television and in the movies.

Haigh’s 2005 novel Baker Towers introduced readers to her fictional town, Bakerton, Pennsylvania. Much like the town she herself grew up in, Bakerton was once a thriving coal mine community. But it slid into deepening poverty when the mines closed. Although the injuries of class inform Haigh’s writing, her stories are not dark, but rather “uplifting and radiant”, as the New York Times reviewer called them. They compel us with their profound compassion for their subjects and the unexpected moments of grace Haigh coaxes from them.

Readers came to love her characters, too — so much so that over the years, they asked Haigh what happened to them. Now she has come up with some of the answers in her new collection of stories about Bakerton, News From Heaven. In them, she weaves together the strands of the Bakerton community and its families over time. And in shining the spotlight on first one character and then another, Haigh illuminates the various angles of the human soul.

In addition to News From Heaven, Jennifer Haigh is the author of four novels, including Baker Towers, Mrs. Kimble, Faith, and The Condition.
Hear our interview with Haigh about Faith.

The River Runs Through Us Kickstarter Campaign

Here’s a great opportunity to support Writers Voice and the cultural heritage of the Connecticut River Valley. WV has a grant from MA Humanities for The River Runs Through Us, our special six part series exploring the literature, spirit and meaning of the Connecticut River in Massachusetts. We need to raise some funds to fulfill the conditions of our grant and we’ve got a Kickstarter campaign to do it. So head on over to this link and check it out! Any contribution is greatly appreciated. But we are not just asking for handouts; we have some wonderful rewards for your support, including new book titles, autographed books from local authors Susan Stinson and Jacqueline Sheehan.

Sarah S. Kilbourne

Silk manufacturing was one of the most important industries to emerge out of the Connecticut River Valley in the 19th century. William Skinner was, perhaps, the most influential of the textile magnates. He lived the American Dream: a poor immigrant, he used grit and skill to build an industrial behemoth– and then lost everything in a catastrophic flood. But he rose like a phoenix, rebuilding his mill on the mighty Connecticut River and thereby putting Holyoke, Massachusetts on the world map.

Francesca Rheannon talks with his great granddaughter, Sarah S. Kilborne, about her book, American Phoenix, The Remarkable Story of William Skinner, a Man Who Turned Disaster Into Destiny, to learn more about the forces that shaped his life and the economy of the Connecticut River Valley.

Tom Juravich

Sarah S. Kilborne

Writers Voice continues its special series, The River Runs Through Us, exploring the literature, spirit and meaning of the Connecticut River in Massachusetts.

This week: industrial development. Historian Kerry Buckley gives an historical overview, Sarah Skinner Kilborne discusses her biography of silk magnate William Skinner, and labor scholar and folk musician Tom Juravich talks about de-industrialization and the potential for a new green industry.

The River Runs Through Us is funded by a generous grant from Mass Humanities. And right now we need your help to continue the project. We need to raise $600 to fulfill the conditions of our grant and to cover our costs. It’s not a lot –and it’s the first time we’ve ever asked you for money. But now we really need you. Please head on over to this link to donate on Kickstarter. Any contribution is greatly appreciated. Thanks so much for your support!

The River Runs Through Us: Episode Three

The Connecticut River was the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution. Along the river, its tributaries and canals provided power for the textile mills, brass works and, later, machine tool industry, that formed the industrial and economic model for the American industry.

Upper Canal and Skinner Silk Mills Holyoke, MA

The river also offered a key transportation and trade route for the lumber, fishing, agriculture and manufacturing industries. Towns like Greenfield, Northampton, Holyoke and Hartford sprung up to take advantage of the clean and cheap water power, and these communities thrived for generations.

Since the 1970s, jobs in the industrial and manufacturing sector have suffered a deep decline. The Connecticut River Valley has been particularly hard hit by the loss of sustainable wage working class jobs. Communities along the Connecticut River are struggling to survive, and to find a replacement for the industries and economic stability that supported them for nearly two hundred years. But new high-speed rail lines are planned, green industry is coming to the Valley, and the potential for new sustainable industrial development is brightening.

In this third episode of Writers Voice Special Series The River Runs Through Us, we explore the economic influence of the Connecticut River on the early American Industrial Revolution with historian Dr. Kerry Buckley; peer into the life of William Skinner, one of the men shaped that revolution in a conversation with his great-granddaughter Sarah Skinner Kilborne; and look ahead to what’s next for the economic stability of the Connecticut River Valley in this era of deindustrialization with sociologist and musician Professor Tom Juravich.

Kerry Buckley
To understand how the Connecticut River shaped the early American industry and economy, Writer’s Voice’s Drew Adamek talked to historian Dr. Kerry Buckley about the influence of the Connecticut River had on economic development and industry in colonial America.

Dr. Kerry Buckley is the Director of Historic Northampton Museum and Education Center. He is an expert on the history and culture of the Connecticut River Valley and edited the essay collection, A Place Called Paradise: Culture and Community in Northampton. His articles and reviews have appeared in The New England Quarterly and The Journal of American History.

Sarah Skinner Kilborne
Silk manufacturing was one of the most important industries to emerge out of the Connecticut River Valley in the 19th century. William Skinner was, perhaps, the most influential of the textile magnates. He lived the American Dream: a poor immigrant, he used grit and skill to build an industrial behemoth– and then lost everything in a catastrophic flood. But he rose like a phoenix, rebuilding his mill on the mighty Connecticut River and thereby putting Holyoke, Massachusetts on the world map.

Francesca Rheannon talks with his great granddaughter, Sarah Kilborne, about her book, American Phoenix, The Remarkable Story of William Skinner, a Man Who Turned Disaster Into Destiny, to learn more about the forces that shaped his life and the economy of the Connecticut River Valley.

LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW

Tom Juravich
The economic catastrophe that has decimated manufacturing and labor isn’t unique to the Connecticut River Valley but, as the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution, the Valley stands as a powerful symbol for the decline of American industry.

Tom Juravich is a professor of Labor Studies and Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has studied labor and unionization in the Connecticut River Valley for decades. His work examines, in part, the loss of industrial jobs and the impact that de-industrialization has on the working class. His work appears widely in academic journals.

He is also an accomplished musician, with three roots rock albums out. We hear the title track from his album, Altar of the Bottom Line. His albums can be found on ITunes or on his website.

Drew Adamek talked to Juravich to find out why so many jobs have been lost in the last several decades, the impact that this has had on Connecticut River Valley communities and what, if anything, can be done to reverse that decline.

The River Runs Through Us is funded by a generous grant from Mass Humanities.

Donald O. White

Damion Searls

Donald O. White talks about his translation of THE ISLAND OF SECOND SIGHT by Albert Vigoleis Thelen. Also, Damion Searls discusses his translation of Hans Keilson’s novel of wartime Amsterdam, COMEDY IN A MINOR KEY (encore.) 

Donald O. White translates Albert Vigoleis Thelen

Albert Vigoleis Thelen’s one claim to fame is his 700 page autobiographical novel, THE ISLAND OF SECOND SIGHT. Published in Germany in the 1950’s, it’s just been re-published in English by Overlook Press to rave reviews. The book’s action recounts the picaresque adventures of the main character, the author’s doppelgaenger Vigoleis and his wife Beatrice on the island of Majorca during the years leading up to World War II.

Anti-Nazi Germans, they lead a precarious existence as the Spanish Civil War heats up, trying to keep out of political trouble while scraping by on practically no money. They get jobs as tour guides to German tourists, live in a brothel, and rub shoulders with such luminaries as Robert Graves, as well as local smugglers, aristocrats, and German Jewish refugees. It all furnishes much grist for Thelen’s literary mill.

Is it memoir? Fiction? Or some kind of metafiction where the narrator uses the story to comment on his own life at one remove. Whatever it is, it’s delightful to read: funny, thought-provoking and endlessly entertaining, especially in Donald O. White’s masterful translation.

Donald O. White is professor emeritus of German at Amherst College. His translation of Albert Vigoleis Thelen’s Island of Second Sight is out from Overlook Press.

Damion Searls translates Hans Keilson

When Hans Keilson died in 2011 at the age of 101, it was just one year after the wildly successful publication in English of his novel, Comedy in a Minor Key, published first in German in 1951. New York Times reviewer Francine Prose described Keilson as “one of the world’s greatest writers” and Keilson basked in the belated recognition of his formidable talents as a writer.

Francesca was thrilled, as well, because she knew Keilson’s wife, historian Marita Keilson-Lauritz and had visited the couple in their home several times. That’s because of her research into the history of an underground community in Amsterdam during WWII, of which her father was a member. Keilson had known several key members of that group — and Marita had joined it in its postwar configuration as the literary organization Castrum Peregrini.

Keilson, a German Jew, fled Nazi Germany for Holland in the 1930’s. When the Nazis occupied Holland, he went underground and joined the resistance. His novella COMEDY IN A MINOR KEY is about how a young Dutch couple react when the Jewish refugee they’re hiding from the Nazis dies a natural death in the midst of the war.

Francesca interviewed the book’s translator, Damion Searles, when the book came out in 2010. A long excerpt is re-aired on this week’s show. Listen to the full interview here, as well as an interview with Keilson’s wife about her husband’s experiences in wartime Holland.

Damion Searls is a translator from German, Norwegian, French, and Dutch and a writer in English. In addition to Comedy In A Minor Key, he has translated Proust, Rilke, Robert Walser, Ingeborg Bachmann, among others; edited a new abridged edition of Thoreau’s Journal; and produced a lost work of Melville’s.