< Back Home So Far Away Judith Berlowitz July 26, 2022 After author Judith Berlowitz found both Gestapo and Soviet records about a relative named Klara Philpsborn, she began thinking about writing Home So Far Away (She Writes Press 2022). Set in diary form, the novel opens in 1925 with a visit from Berlin to an uncle living in Sevilla, Spain. "Onkle" Julius has not told his wife and children that he is Jewish, so his visiting family can only celebrate a quiet, hidden Passover, but Klara is intrigued by the language, food, and culture of Spain. A few years later, she takes a job as a chemist in Madrid. 1n 1936, when the Spanish Civil War breaks out, Klara, now Clara, enlists and ends up putting both relationships and her life at risk. Although she must hide her Jewish and communist identity in Spain, Clara is passionate about fighting for human rights and equality. The tale ends in 1938, just as the Nazi movement is picking up steam in Clara’s homeland. Los Angeles-born genealogist Judith Berlowitz fluttered through various career phases before settling on historical fiction as her life’s work. Tools acquired during all these phases are visible in her debut novel, Home So Far Away (She Writes Press, 2022). Her years as a musician (classical guitar, oboe, singer, arranger), language teacher (Spanish), cultural studies teacher, tour guide, peace activist, and genealogist converge in a fictional diary about a relative from Germany in the Spanish Civil War. Judith lives in San Francisco with her husband and sings in the San Francisco Bach Choir while serving as a volunteer curator with the genealogical website, Geni.com. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Moon Always Rising Alice C. Early May 29, 2020 At the dawn of the new millennium, Els Gordon finds herself adrift – she’s in mourning for her fiancé and her father, she’s lost the inheritance of her Scottish Highlands estate, her mother left when she was two-years-old but it her only living relative, she’s about to be unemployed, and she’s just bought an old plantation house on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean. It’s a little haunted by the previous owner, who needs help making amends, and in exchange, helps Els fall in love with a man who has, like Els, survived heartache and loss. Listen in as I speak with Alice C. Early about her book The Moon Always Rising (She Writes Press, 2020). Early ’s career spans academia, commercial real estate, international executive recruiting, and career-transition coaching, and has included many ‘first woman to…’ roles. Her college English/creative writing major and professional roles requiring listening and shaping stories eventually pointed her back to her first love—writing fiction. In her cherished Martha’s Vineyard community, Alice sings in a local group and fosters sustainability and women’s rights and voices. An avid gardener and cook, she nurtures friends and neighbors with local bounty and her experiments in gluten-free baking. Alice and her husband have visited Nevis annually since 1996 and otherwise share a hand-built life in view of the sea. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Kickdown Rebecca Clarren August 30, 2019 Two sisters are struggling to save their land when a gas well explodes on a neighboring ranch in western Colorado, setting off a disturbing chain of events. Their father has died, the older sister has become unraveled and the younger sister is mauled by an angry cow. Her ex-boyfriend is buying up oil and gas rights and downplays a spate of cancer-related deaths near his wells. The company offers the sisters bottled water when the river starts bubbling. There’s also an Iraqi war veteran who helps the sisters while he’s on probation from his job as a police officer, putting his own marriage at risk. This is a moving debut novel about family, land, and the preservation of both in rural America. Award-winning journalist Rebecca Clarren has been writing about the rural West for twenty years. Her journalism, for which she has won the Hillman Prize, an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship, and nine grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, has appeared in such publications as MotherJones , High Country News , The Nation , and Salon.com. Her debut novel, Kickdown (Arcade, 2018) was shortlisted for the PEN/Bellwether Prize. She lives in Portland, Ore. with her husband and two young sons. When she’s not writing, Rebecca can be found hiking, running with friends, or telling people what books to read. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Four Dead Horses KT Sparks April 13, 2021 Today I talked to KT Sparks about her debut novel Four Dead Horses (Regal House, 2021) On May 1, 1982, eighteen-year-old Martin Oliphant watches a horse drown off the shore of Lake Michigan—the first of four equine corpses marking the trail that will lead Martin out of the small-minded small town of Pierre, Michigan, onto the open ranges of Elko, Nevada, and into the open arms, or at least open mics, of the cowboy poets who gather there to perform. Along the way, he nurtures a dying mother, who insists the only thing wrong with her is tennis elbow; corrals a demented father, who believes he’s Father Christmas; assists the dissolute local newspaper editor; and serves stints as horse rustler and pet mortician. For thirty years, Martin searches for an escape route to the West, to poetry, and to his first love, the cowgirl Ginger, but never manages to get much farther than the city limits of his Midwestern hometown—that is, until a world- famous cow horse dies while touring through Pierre, and Martin is tapped to transport its remains to the funeral at the 32nd Annual Elko Cowboy Poetry Confluence. KT Sparks is a writer and farmer whose work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Pank , and elsewhere. She received an AB in Politics, Economics, Rhetoric, and Law from University of Chicago, an MA in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from Oxford University, Brasenose College, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University in Charlotte, an educational grounding that matches her lifelong interest in everything and mastery of nothing. She spent twenty-five years in Washington DC, most of it in the US Senate, as a policy analyst and speechwriter and continues to be involved in progressive politics. When she's not reading fiction (all types) or trying to banish weeds from the vegetable garden, she practices Zen Buddhism, binges British detective series, and cooks stuff grown on the farm (or by her more talented neighbors). Her greatest passion is her large distended family, which includes children, stepchildren, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, siblings, parents, in-laws, exes, and seemingly unending concentric circles of spouses, partners, fiancés, more exes, and more spouses—shining bright and swirling outward, like the rings of Jupiter, but less dusty. KT lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with her husband, dog, a fluctuating population of barn cats, and no horses, dead or alive, waiting for the kids to come visit, or at least call for God’s sake. Four Dead Horses is her first novel. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Gone Dead Chanelle Benz July 27, 2020 A decrepit house in Greendale, Mississippi once belonged to Billie James’s father, a renowned black poet who died unexpectedly when she was four years old. Her mother dies of cancer. Then years later, her paternal grandmother dies and leaves Billie the old Mississippi Delta house. At age 34, Billie returns to the house, encounters the locals, and learns that on the day her father died, she went missing. She doesn’t want to leave Mississippi until she finds out what happened, but someone doesn’t want Billie to know the truth. Told from several perspectives, The Gone Dead (Ecco, 2019) is a story about family and memory, justice for those who were never given a chance, and some of the wounds caused by racism in America. Chanelle Benz has published work in Guernica, Granta.com, The New York Times, Electric Literature, The American Reader , Fence and others, and is the recipient of an O. Henry Prize. Her story collection The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead was named a Best Book of 2017 by The San Francisco Chronicle and one of Electric Literature’s 15 Best Short Story Collections of 2017. It was also shortlisted for the 2018 Saroyan Prize and longlisted for the 2018 PEN/Robert Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Story Prize. The Gone Dead was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and a Tonight Show Summer Reads Finalist. It was long-listed for the 2020 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and the 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. It was also named a best new book of the summer by O, The Oprah Magazine , Time , Southern Living , and Nylon . Benz currently lives in Memphis where she teaches at Rhodes College. Whenever possible, she loves to listen to true crime and history podcasts. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Set Adrift: A Mystery and A Memoir Sarah Conover June 27, 2023 When racing yacht “The Revonoc” went down in the Bermuda Triangle’s Sargasso Sea during a freakish storm in January of 1958, the sailing world was dumbfounded. The boat and five people on board, all well-known in the sailing world, completely vanished. Only the dinghy showed up a few days later, but all searches over the following months turned up nothing at all. Sarah Conover, the youngest of the two daughters of Lori and Larry, and granddaughters of Dorothy and Harvey, became an orphan that day. As an adult, Sarah began to ask questions about her parents and grandparents – her memoir weaves interviews with family members, articles, and official Coast Guard reports that Sarah studies to understand her ongoing feelings of loss, loneliness, and depression. Ultimately, her final thought is “There is no true story. Only mercy.” Sarah Conover holds a BA in comparative religions from the University of Colorado, and an MFA in creative writing from Eastern Washington University. She has worked as a television producer for PBS and Internews (an international media NGO), a social worker for Catholic Charities, a public school teacher, and taught creative writing through the community colleges of Spokane, Washington. She is the author of six books on world wisdom traditions and spirituality published by Skinner House Books, the educational publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Her poetry, essays and interviews have been published in a variety of literary magazines and anthologies. She is a feature writer and columnist for Tricycle Magazine: the Buddhist Review and has taught meditation for many years at Airway Heights Corrections Center and within the Spokane community. Ms. Conover was a recipient of Washington State’s Grants for Artist’s Projects (GAP grant) and writing fellowships from the Ucross Foundation in Clearmont, Wyoming, and the Willapa Bay Artist Residence Program in Oysterville, Washington. She lives in a condo in Spokane, Washington and in her beloved yurtiverse at the base of the North Cascades in Winthrop, Washington, where she and her husband are building a small hermitage for monastic retreats. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Atomic Love Jennie Fields October 13, 2020 Inspired by Leona Woods, the only woman who worked on the Manhattan Project, Atomic Love (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2020) tells the story of Rosalind Porter, a physicist recruited by Enrico Fermi to join his team at the University of Chicago. During the war, Rosalind had fallen in love with Weaver, a fellow scientist working on the project. After the bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he suddenly drops her, and she’s fired from the project based on a false report claiming that she’d become unstable. Now she works at the antique jewelry counter in Marshall Fields’ Department Store and struggles to pay her Michigan Avenue rent. It’s 1950, five years after the war ends, and suddenly Weaver is trying to get back in her life. He broke her heart, and probably got her fired, so she never wants to see him again. But the FBI gives her a chance to make it up to all those who died because of her work on the atomic bomb. All she needs to do is go back to Weaver. Jennie Fields received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is the author of the novels Lily Beach , Crossing Brooklyn Ferry , The Middle Ages, and The Age of Desire . A Chicago native who loved Marshall Fields and used to live in the same neighborhood as her protagonist, Fields was inspired by her own mother’s work as a University of Chicago-trained biochemist in the 1950s. Fields now lives with her husband in Nashville, Tennessee, where she is working on her next novel. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Dead Won't Tell S.K. Waters December 6, 2022 In The Dead Won't Tell (Camcat Books, 2022), Abbie Adams is hired to write an article about an unsolved murder that took place in a small southern college town on the evening of the Moon Landing in 1969. She’d almost completed her doctorate but was derailed at the end, and instead became a journalist. She’s widowed with two teenagers, and the faculty advisor who’d refused to pass her dissertation seems to be connected to the crime. She’s forced to speak to him for the first time since he derailed her career, but he refuses to tell her anything. So, in addition to hosting an old college friend with his own journalistic quest, Abbie seeks out the few living witnesses in order to piece together the events of that evening. When two of those witnesses are murdered and another is pushed down the stairs, it becomes clear that someone doesn’t want the truth coming out. Abbie’s friends rally to protect her as she rushes to meet either her deadline or her downfall. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Lamps of Albarracin Edith Saavedra April 19, 2022 The Lamps of Albarracin tells the story of Sarita, who looks back on her life before and after the Inquisition arrived in her town. It’s 15th century Spain, and Sarita is the daughter and assistant of the town’s Jewish doctor. She recalls living in a warm, loving household with her sisters and brother and Torah lessons taught by Solomon the Aged. She was raised with several languages and always looking forward to the next holiday. In the kingdom of Aragon, Albarracin was a town in which Christians, Muslims, and Jews still lived mostly in harmony, although the winds of change have started blowing across the Iberian Peninsula. We watch Sarita grow up – she’s skilled with healing, which helps her survive the punishment she receives from the Spanish Inquisition. She hadn’t known that she’d been baptized at birth. Rooted in Judaism, Sarita finds ways to live as her true self even when confined to a convent or masquerading as Muslim to escape the Inquisition. Edith Scott Saavedra was born in California to an American father and a mother from the Republic of Panama. She earned her B.A. (magna cum laude) and J.D. from Harvard University and has had a distinguished career as an international lawyer, business consultant, and author, based in Hong Kong and Singapore. She is the co-author of several leading nonfiction works on the competitiveness of industries, regions and nations. She’s currently focused on educating the public in the United States and Spain, particularly students, about Sephardic heritage and history, including true stories of resistance to the Inquisition, the contributions of the Sephardim to Spain, and the importance of interfaith friendship. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Hysterical Elissa Bassist November 22, 2022 Today I talked to Elissa Bassist about her memoir Hysterical: A Memoir (Hachette, 2022) For two years author Elissa Bassist saw over twenty medical specialists for pain that none of them managed to diagnose or resolve. Some of their treatments led to other medical problems but never relief. Then an acupuncturist suggested that she simply needed to take control of her voice, and Bassist was shocked when it worked. How, as far as we think we’ve come, is it still the case that a girl born in 1984 could have so much in common with generations of women who were expected to be silent, to "get along," to accept whatever was happening even when their souls ached, their heads pounded, and their bodies withered? Bassist was accused of "being dramatic" when she experienced pain and "inappropriate" when she expressed her sadness or suffering. She said “yes,” when she meant, “no,” and accepted others’ opinions that she was too emotional, too loud, or too aggressive. In her justifiably angry voice, the one she had to take control of, Bassist shares her personal journey from broken and bleeding, scared and lonely, to acerbically funny and quick to call out nonsense. She’s straightforward and unashamed in sharing the moments she’s least proud of and the times she’d rather forget, because now she wants to teach other women that it’s okay to "look bad" in service of unmuting their own voices. Elissa Bassist is the editor of the “Funny Women” column on The Rumpus and the author of the award-deserving memoir Hysterical . As a founding contributor to The Rumpus, she’s written cultural and personal criticism since the website launched in 2009. She also teaches humor writing at The New School, Catapult, 92NY, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, and elsewhere, and she is probably her therapist’s favorite. Bassist lives in Brooklyn with her dog Benny, a very good boy, and when not writing or reading or teaching, she watches horror movies, rides roller coasters, and does light witchcraft. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Maybe It's Me: On Being the Wrong Kind of Woman Eileen Pollack November 1, 2022 In her new essay collection, Maybe It’s Me: On Being the Wrong Kind of Woman (Delphinium Books 2022), Eileen Pollack covers her life in snippets or by delving into history, but the overall picture is of an extremely talented writer, a brilliant woman with a degree in physics and a long list of respected publications who is still somewhat bewildered to find herself alone. She tells stories about her childhood home, her grandparents, her father the dentist, her mother’s closets, her ex-husband who thought his work took precedence, her son who turned into a socialist, and assorted neighbors, friends, and men who drifted through her life. In her distinctive voice, she sometimes slips humor into the most horrendous situations, maybe because that’s how she survived. This is an author who dissects her thoughts, words, and actions without worrying about having a big bow to tie it all together. Eileen Pollack is a writer whose novel Breaking and Entering , about the deep divisions between blue and red America, was named a 2012 New York Times Editor’s Choice selection. Her essay, “Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?” was published in the Sunday, October 6, 2013, issue of The New York Times Magazine and went viral; the essay is an excerpt from her investigative memoir The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still A Boys’ Club , published in 2015 by Beacon Press. A native of the Catskill Mountains, Eileen also is the author of the novels The Bible of Dirty Jokes and Paradise, New York , as well as two collections of short fiction, In the Mouth and The Rabbi in the Attic . Her innovative work of creative nonfiction called Woman Walking Ahead: In Search of Catherine Weldon and Sitting Bull was made into a major motion picture starring Jessica Chastain, Sam Rockwell, and Michael Greyeyes. A long-time faculty member and former director of the Helen Zell MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan , she now lives in Boston and offers her services as a freelance editor and writing coach . When she isn’t reading, writing, or teaching, Eileen loves to play tennis. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Rocky Orchard Barbara Monier June 26, 2020 Sitting on the porch swing at her family’s vacation house, Mazie sees an old woman cutting through the orchard across the way and offers her a glass of water. Before long, they are playing cards every morning, and Mazie, triggered by the place that holds many childhood memories, begins sharing stories with her new friend, Lula. As Mazie reveals more about her past, she begins to question how Lula happened to come into view that morning, and how she herself made her way back to the orchard. Today I talked to Barbara Monier about her new novel The Rocky Orchard (Amika Press, 2020). Monier studied writing at Yale University and the University of Michigan, but she has been writing since she could hold a chubby pencil. While at Michigan, she received the Avery and Jule Hopwood Prize. Before The Rocky Orchard’ s release, her three previous novels are You, In Your Green Shirt , A Little Birdie Told Me , and Pushing the River . Ms. Monier lives in Chicago, where a breathtaking view of Lake Michigan inspires her writing, except when it distracts her and makes writing anything completely impossible. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next