Writer's Voice with Francesca Rheannon

We talk with best-selling author Ken Follett about his new novel, Never. It’s a chilling look about how a small international incident could lead to nuclear annihilation. Then, Anthony Horowitz tells us about the third in his meta-murder mystery Hawthorne series, A Line To Kill. Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Ken Follett Every one of Ken Follett’s many novels published after his 1979 breakout thriller Eye of the Needle have been huge bestsellers. And Never, his new one just out this week, will likely be one, too — if the world wants to take the cautionary tale it spins seriously. That’s because Never is about how the world could slide down the slippery slope to nuclear war. The big interconnected crises we face—climate chaos, migration and wars over oil—are the powder keg to the spark of a small incident on the border of Chad and Sudan. Thus begins a chain of events that bring in North Korea, China, and the US in a terrifying game of chicken that bids fair to end very, very badly. Ken Follett is the author of nearly fifty books, including Pillars of the Earth and A Column of Fire. Read an excerpt from Never Anthony Horowitz Bestselling maven of murder mysteries Anthony Horowitz is back with us to talk about his new novel, A Line to Kill. It’s the third in the Daniel Hawthorne series, where the author himself becomes a character in his own novel, serving as Watson to Hawthorne’s Sherlock Holmes. (The others in the series are The Word Is Murder and The Sentence Is Death.) In the earlier books, Hawthorne was an enigmatic character. Now, in A Line To Kill, his character finally begins to become more transparent as he ferrets out the murderer. But the real delight is to follow Horowitz as he continues as first person narrator of the series. It’s a delicious meta-musing on the nature of mystery writing, including witty allusions to the greats of the genre, like Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. And with his sly references to his own shortcomings, Horowitz provokes chuckles as the novels’ other characters cast doubt on his competence. It’s entertainment in the highest sense of the term. Anthony Horowitz is the bestselling author of, among many others, Magpie Murders, House of Silk, Moriarty and the Alex Rider series as well as the TV crime dramas Foyle’s War and Midsomer Murders. Listen to our conversation with Horowitz about The Sentence Is Death Next week on Writer’s Voice: We spend the hour talking with David Talbot about the radical change-makers of 1960s and ’70s. His book, co-written with his sister Margaret Talbot is By the Light of Burning Dreams.

We talk with graphic artist Joe Lee about his stunningly illustrated book, Forgiveness: The Story of Eva Kor, Survivor of The Auschwitz Twin Experiments. Then Valerie Martin tells us about her new novel I Give It To You. It’s a many-layered tale about what happens when an Italian friend tells a writer a story about her family in Mussolini’s Italy. Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Joe Lee When Eva Mozes Kor was liberated from the Auschwitz death camp in January 1944, she was just a few days shy of turning eleven years old. That she survived at all was due to one thing: she was a twin. Actually, it was also due to something else, as well: her indomitable spirit. It was a quality she brought years later to the fight to tell the story of the cruel experimentation on twins carried out on her, her sister and other children by the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. In 1978, she started to tell that story, but it wasn’t easy. Her rage at the treatment she had suffered as a child sometimes turned people away. For her own mental health, she had to find a way through that rage and out the other side. Eva Kor chose to forgive—though not absolve—those who had perpetrated the monstrous crimes against her, her family and the other victims of the Nazi Holocaust. Graphic artist Joe Lee tells Eva’s story in his heartbreaking biography, Forgiveness: The Story of Eva Kor. The illustrations are absolutely stunning. And so is the narrative that Lee spins, as he takes the reader through Eva’s childhood, her trauma in Auschwitz, her resettlement in the US in Indiana, her fight to get the story of the Mengele twins recognized, and, finally, her choice to forgive. Valerie Martin Valerie Martin has written a number of highly acclaimed novels, among them Mary Reilly and Property. Her newest, I Give It to You, has received rave reviews. It’s a multi-layered story of family, war, art, and betrayal set around an ancient, ancestral home in the Tuscan countryside. When Jan Vidor, an American writer and academic, rents an apartment in a Tuscan villa for the summer, she plans to spend her break working on a novel about Mussolini. Instead, she finds herself captivated by her aristocratic landlady, the elegant, acerbic Beatrice Salviati whose family has owned Villa Chiara for generations. Jan is intrigued by Beatrice’s stories of World War II, particularly by the tragic fate of her uncle Sandro, who was mysteriously murdered in the driveway of the villa at the conclusion of the war. Day by day, Beatrice makes Jan privy to her family history. But when Jan finds she can’t resist writing Beatrice’s story, it causes complications in their friendship. The Guardian called I Give It To You “a novel of philosophical and creative inquiry, cleverly plotted and packed with great characters.” Valerie Martin is the author of twelve novels, four collections of short fiction, and a biography of Saint Francis of Assisi, Salvation.

We talk with Victor Wooten, co-founder of the band Bela Fleck and the Flectones and author of The Spirit of Music. The book is an inspiring parable of the importance of music and the threats that it faces in today’s world. Then, we talk with historian David Stebenne about his book, Promised Land: How The Rise Of The Middle-Class Transformed America, 1929 to 1968.

We talk with Ruth Ozeki about her wonderful new novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness. It’s a coming-of-age/Hero’s Journey that is heart-wrenching, inspiring, funny and deeply wise. Then, writer Hilma Wolitzer tells us about her retrospective collection of stories, Today A Woman Went Mad In The Supermarket. It spans decades of stories about an ordinary couple, written in extraordinary prose. Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Ruth Ozeki In Ruth Ozeki’s new novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness, the objects around him speak to a boy who is grieving the loss of his father. The most central object is the Book itself, which writes Benny’s story, engaging in a heuristic dialog with its young subject. The novel is a Hero’s Journey and coming-of-age story that spins the tale of Benny and his also-grieving mother Annabelle with compassion and wisdom. No surprise there, as Ozeki is a long time practitioner of Zen Buddhism and has been a Zen priest since 2010. With its blend of sympathetic characters, riveting plot, and engagement with everything from jazz, to climate change, to our attachment to material possessions, The Book of Form and Emptiness is classic Ruth Ozeki — bold, wise, poignant, playful, humane and heartbreaking. We spoke with her in 2013 about her third novel, A Tale for the Time Being, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Booker prize. Ruth Ozeki teaches creative writing at Smith College and is affiliated with the Brooklyn Zen Center and the Everyday Zen Foundation. Read an excerpt from The Book of Form and Emptiness Hilma Wolitzer When nonagenarian writer Hilma Wolitzer and her husband came down with COVID last year (Wolitzer survived but her husband did not), she couldn’t anticipate the season of grief it would bring—nor that the way out of that grief would be led by a book. Wolitzer’s daughter, the writer Meg Wolitzer, suggested her mother put together a collection of short stories that Hilma had written over decades. The project was a way to deal with her loss. In Today A Woman Went Mad In The Supermarket, the stories are about a married couple, Paulie and Howard, and the course of their marriage over a lifetime. Their life together is ordinary, but the writing is not. Wolitzer wields her pen masterfully, illuminating her characters and their motivations with, as one reader, Lauren Goff, put it, “wit, with rage, with grief, with the kind of prose that makes you both laugh and thrill to the darker, spikier emotions just barely visible under the bright surface.” In addition to Today A Woman Went Mad In The Supermarket, Hilma Wolitzer is the author of thirteen novels, including four for young readers, and one of nonfiction. Hilma Wolitzer’s Blog Next week on Writer’s Voice: we talk with David Stebenne about his book, Promised land: How The Rise Of The Middle-Class Transformed America and Victor Wooten tells us about his allegorical novel,

We talk with Geo Maher about his new book, A World Without Police: How Strong Communities Make Cops Obsolete. Then, we hear the thrilling and hopeful story of a rural community in EL Salvador that took on a global gold mining company — and won. John Cavanagh & Robin Broad tell us about their book, The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved A Country From Corporate Greed. Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Geo Maher When the world erupted in global protests against police violence in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, it seemed like finally some real police reform was possible. Calls came to defund the police—even abolish policing—in favor of tackling the roots of crime with social supports. But a year later, even the most minimal reform, ending the so-called “qualified immunity” that puts police above the law, has been ignored. Police departments are more flush with funds than ever before. Against this step backward, radical political theorist Geo Maher has written a guide for the way forward to real police reform. In his book, A World Without Police, he brilliantly diagnoses the problem of policing in our society and shows how communities can become safer, stronger, and more democratic by creating beneficial alternatives to policing. Geo Maher is an organizer, writer, political theorist and Visiting Associate Professor at Vassar College. A World Without Police is his seventh book. Robin Broad and John Cavanagh In a world dominated by ever more authoritarian corporate power, it’s a rare event when ordinary people win. But that’s what happened when a small, peasant community in El Salvador went up against a global mining corporation that wanted to open a gold mine that would have poisoned the country’s main water source. Robin Broad and John Cavanagh are a husband-and-wife team who have been involved in the Salvadoran gold mining saga since 2009. In their book The Water Defenders, they tell the inspirational story of how the community overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to win not one but two historic victories. The lessons they draw from the story can inspire those who are fighting to defend our communities and the planet against those who put their profits above our survival. Broad is an expert in international development and the recipient of two MacArthur fellowships. John Cavanagh is director of the Washington, DC-based Institute for Policy Studies. Read An Excerpt from The Water Defenders

This week: two novels exploring love, trauma and the legacies of war. Both are based on true stories from World War II. First, Jai Chakrabarti tells us about his novel A Play for the End of the World. It centers around a play written by Rabindranath Tagore that was put on by orphans in Warsaw just before they were taken to the death camp. Then, the same play is re-staged decades later, in India, as another act of resistance against tyranny. Then, personal trauma and collective trauma intersect with a love story. We talk with Caroline Lea about her new novel The Metal Heart. It’s set on an Orkney Island during WWII, where Italian prisoners and British islanders find conflict and common ground. Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Jai Chakrabarti It’s New York City, 1972. Jaryk Smith, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, and Lucy Gardener, newly arrived in the city from her southern home town, are in the first bloom of love. Then they get word that Jaryk’s oldest friend from childhood has died under mysterious circumstances in a village in eastern India. Jaryk travels to India alone to collect his friend’s ashes but soon finds himself enmeshed in efforts to stage a play in protest against the government—the same play, written by the great Rabindranath Tagore, that Jaryk performed as a child in Warsaw as an act of resistance against the Nazis. Torn between the survivor’s guilt he has carried for decades and his feelings for Lucy, Jaryk must decide how to honor both the past and the present, and how to accept a happiness he is not sure he deserves. Jai Chakrabarti’s short fiction has appeared in numerous journals and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Short Stories, and awarded a Pushcart Prize. A Play for the End of the World is his first novel. Read an excerpt from A Play For The End of the World Caroline Lea On a remote island in the Orkneys off the Scottish coast there still stands an ornate Catholic chapel built by Italian prisoners of war during WWII. In reality, the island was uninhabited before the prison camp was built. But in Caroline Lea’s haunting new novel The Metal Heart, the island is home to a few hardy souls. Among them are the orphaned twin sisters Dorothy and Constance. Where their neighbors see bloodthirsty enemies, the sisters see sick and wounded men and volunteer to nurse them. Dorothy finds herself drawn to one of them, a young man named Cesare. The two fall in love, testing the sisters’ loyalty to each other and to their community. In her imagining of a story based on the sparse historical record of the prison camp, Caroline Lea explores the themes of trauma, both personal and historical and the capacity of the human heart to transform suffering into compassion. Caroline Lea is the author of two previous novels,

We talk with physician and activist Rupa Marya and her co-author writer and food activist Raj Patel about their book, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice. Then, country music singer Jimmie Allen tells us about his book for children, My Voice Is A Trumpet. And we have a book recommendation about a new environmental book for kids. Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Raj Patel & Rupa Marya If there’s anything the COVID19 pandemic has taught us, it’s that social and economic injustice leads to differences in which groups die more from a deadly infectious disease. But it’s not just COVID. People who are more stressed by poverty and discrimination, succumb at higher rates to illness and early death. That’s because stress begets inflammation in the body. And inflammation begets all kinds of ills, like cancer, heart disease and diabetes. But it’s not just our bodies. The whole planet is inflamed. In their book Inflamed, Rupa Marya and Raj Patel draw a link between the body, as both metaphor and exemplar of inflammation, to climate change. They say that inflammation is a biological, social, economic, and ecological pathway. All these pathways intersect in a manner constructed by the modern capitalist system. Raj Patel is the New York Times bestselling author of The Value of Nothing, Stuffed and Starved and other books. Rupa Marya is a physician, activist, and co-founder of the Do No Harm Coalition.

#ElectrifyEverything! We spend the hour talking with Saul Griffith about his new book, Electrify: An Optimist’s Playbook For Our Clean Energy Future. It’s about how we can solve the climate crisis, live well and save money by electrifying everything—and powering that electricity with clean energy. In maybe the 1980s or the 1990s when climate change just came to the attention of the general population, you could still imagine that we could get to the finish line with the transition via natural gas or biomass and biofuels. But we’ve left the carbon game so late, we need to get to fully decarbonized infrastructure in our next move…It’s now time that the fossil fuel machine in your life has to be replaced at its end of life with something that’s electric…to meet our climate targets of as close to one and a half degrees as we can get…We just need to make sure that every fossil fuel machine is the last version of itself.     — Saul Griffith Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Electrify by Saul Griffith Time is running short. This week, UN secretary general, António Guterres, warned that “the world is on a catastrophic pathway to 2.7 degrees of heating”. That would almost certainly result in runaway global warming that would render our Earth uninhabitable. That horrific scenario is what scientist, engineer, entrepreneur and energy expert Saul Griffith is determined to forestall. He says our failure to fix climate change is just a failure of imagination. He says we have the tools to make the transition that will lead to vastly cheaper, cleaner energy with no loss in our standard of living. Sound too good to be true? Griffith lays it all out in impressive detail in his book Electrify. It’s a manual with a message: if we get the government policy right, every American household can make the transition to clean energy by the latter half of this decade. And it will save an average of $2500 per year per household. But we need federal and state governments to step up to the plate to help everybody do it, no matter their income. Biden’s Build Back Better infrastructure plan would be a down payment on making that happen. Saul Griffith is advising the White House on energy policy. He says we need to pass, at the minimum, the climate provisions of the two infrastructure bills now in Congress. Waiting will cost us not only billions, not only lives, but our futures, as well. Saul Griffith is the co-founder of Rewiring America, which is working to launch a movement that electrifies everything. He is also the founder and chief scientist at Other Lab. Read an excerpt from Electrify

This week, two beautifully written memoirs that stir hope as we all confront the losses of our ecosystems in crisis. First, we talk with William deBuys about The Trail To Kanjiroba: Rediscovering Earth in an Age of Loss. It’s about a medical expedition he went on to Upper Dolpo, a remote, ethnically Tibetan region of northwestern Nepal, and the pilgrimage it became. Then, a moving memoir about ancient farming—and bringing it back. We talk with James Rebanks about his award-winning book, Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey. Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. William deBuys When conservationist and author William deBuys was invited by Zen master Joan Halifax to go to Nepal in a medical mission, he leaped at the chance to see a region gravely threatened by ecological disruptions — a last chance to see things as they have been for millennia. What he discovered was a way to hold both joy and grief simultaneously in his awareness: joy at the beauty of the natural world, the human exchange with the Nepalese, and the opportunity to practice care for both people and the planet. But always, there was the undertone of grief in this age of loss. Bill McKibben called de Buys one of the planet’s great observers, saying that the Trail to Kanjiroba may be his masterwork. DeBuys is the author of ten books, including A Great Aridness, which we spoke with him about in 2012. See photos of DeBuys’ Journey to Nepal James Rebanks When James Rebanks was a kid, he didn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps in the family business of farming. Until, that is, his grandfather stepped in to awaken in the boy a love for the natural world and the stewardship of it. His grandfather farmed in the old ways. Rebanks writes that, when he joined his grandfather, he was “a boy living through the last days of an ancient farming world”, where the farm animals, wildlife and his grandfather were “part of the same whole.” Then his grandfather, and his way of farming on the land, died with him—for awhile. Rebanks’ father tried to farm in the new, industrial, monoculture way, with disastrous results. When Rebanks inherited the farm, he revived his grandfather’s legacy and brought the land back again to wholeness. He chronicles that journey in his beautifully written memoir, Pastoral Song. The great nature writing legend Wendell Berry said, “James Rebanks’s story of his family’s farm is just about perfect. It belongs with the finest writing of its kind.” James Rebanks is also the author of a bestselling earlier memoir, The Shepherd’s Life. Read An Excerpt from Pastoral Song Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook    

This is a special edition of Writer’s Voice produced on the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Many questions about the terror attacks remain unanswered for the families of the 9/11 victims. They remain unanswered for many other Americans, as well. We talk with Ray McGinnis about his book, UNANSWERED QUESTIONS: What the September Eleventh Families Asked and the 9/11 Commission Ignored Why did WTC Building 7 collapse some eight hours after the North and South Towers, despite being a block and a half away and untouched by either of the planes that took the Towers down? Why did NORAD, charged with keeping America’s skies safe from attack, fail to bring even one of the hijacked planes down — an unprecedented failure for an agency that incessantly practiced just such maneuvers? Why did the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund specify that the victims’ relatives would lose their benefits if they tried to sue any of the alleged Saudi funders of terrorism related to the attacks? That was just one of the ways that the focus was taken off the Saudi attackers and misplaced onto Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with the attacks. All these questions and many more are explored in Ray McGinnis’ book, ‘UNANSWERED QUESTIONS: What the September Eleventh Families Asked and the 9/11 Commission Ignored. It’s a detailed account of the FSC, the Family Steering Committee for the Independent 9/11 Commission: the stories of the families, why they created the Commission, what they wanted to know, and how they were stonewalled and stymied in their efforts to get an accounting of the truth. Kristen Breitweiser, one of the FSC members said “We are going to get to the bottom of this and we are going to make sure someone is held responsible so that nobody else ever had to walk in our shoes.” Ray McGinnis’ book is a sober, even-handed, meticulous exploration of the questions still outstanding after 20 years.

Shakespeare on the brain! We talk with Nuyorican playwright Migdalia Cruz about her adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth for modern audiences. Then, Michael Blanding tells the fascinating story of an amateur scholar who has built a compelling and controversial case about the source of Shakespeare’s work. The book is North By Shakespeare: A Rogue Scholar’s Quest For The Truth Behind The Bard’s Work. Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Migdalia Cruz In Migdalia Cruz’s Macbeth, the Witches run the world. The Macbeths live out a dark cautionary tale of love, greed, and power, falling from glory into calamity as the Witches spin their fate. Translating Shakespeare’s language for a modern audience, Nuyorican playwright Migdalia Cruz rewrites Macbeth with all the passion of the Bronx. This translation of Macbeth was presented in 2018 as part of the Play On! Shakespeare project, an ambitious undertaking from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival that commissioned new translations of 39 Shakespeare plays. These translations present the Bard’s work in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. Migdalia Cruz is the author of 63 plays, operas, screenplays, and musicals — and five Translations, of which Macbeth is one. Play On podcast of Macbeth Michael Blanding Controversies over whether Shakespeare really wrote the plays attributed to him have arisen literally over the centuries. That’s because many have questioned how this glover’s son from the backwater of Stratford-on-Avon could have written plays with so much knowledge of court politics, foreign lands and international intrigue. Alternate authors like the Earl of Oxford have been passionately put forward and just as passionately rebuffed. But what if Shakespeare’s authorship is real, but the source for his plays lies with someone who was in a position to have the erudite knowledge evidenced in the plays—another playwright whose plays Shakespeare reworked in his own genius of language? That’s the thesis of Michael Blanding’s new book about the renegade scholar proposing that theory, North By Shakespeare. Blanding employs all his skills as an investigative reporter to put the evidence before the reader. He also takes readers inside the vibrant era of Elizabethan England as well as the contemporary scene of Shakespeare scholars and obsessives. Michael Blanding is an investigative journalist and best-selling author of The Map Thief. North By Shakespeare is the winner of the 2021 International Book Award in Narrative Non-Fiction. Read an excerpt from North by Shakespeare Next week on Writer’s Voice, we talk with James Rebanks about Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey. Also William deBuys tells us about Trail to Kanjiroba: Rediscovering Earth in an Age of Loss.

We talk with Julia Sweig about her acclaimed book, Lady Bird Johnson: In Plain Sight. Then, after exiting Afghanistan, President Biden is turning his attention to China, implying that China is a serious security threat that the US may have to meet with force. But security analyst Michael Klare disagrees. We talk with him about his recent post in the Nation magazine, The Real Existential Threat Is Our Overheating Planet. Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Julia Sweig When the assassination of JFK catapulted Lyndon Baines Johnson into the White House, few among the public knew much about the new president—and even less about the new First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson. LBJ had to try to heal a grieving nation. He was confronted with the great defining issues of that time (and ours): civil rights, income inequality and military conflict abroad. The person he most leaned on for advice and support was his wife. Lady Bird chronicled her time in the White House in an extraordinary set of notebooks and tape recordings that reveal her centrality to the Johnson Administration. As Julia Sweig reveals in her book based on that chronicle, Lady Bird Johnson: In Plain Sight, the First Lady was deeply insightful and profoundly engaged with the issues of the day. Her Highway Beautification program, for example, tackled the issue of environmental racism way before environmental racism was even a term. Yet as protests against the Vietnam War exploded across the nation, this brilliant woman found herself increasingly out of touch. In addition to her brilliant and fascinating book, Sweig has also produced a spellbinding podcast on the same topic, using Lady Bird Johnson’s own tape recordings. Julia Sweig is a New York Times bestselling author, scholar and entrepreneur. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, the Nation and other venues. She is a senior research fellow at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin. Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight is her fourth book. Read An Excerpt from Sweig’s Book Michael Klare On August 31, when President Biden spoke about the pullout of US and allied troops in Afghanistan, he mentioned a pivot to what he termed “competition” with China and Russia. There have been a lot of hints coming from the White House lately that that “competition” is all about beefing up the US military to meet what Biden and his Pentagon advisors see as a future existential threat coming from China’s increasing weapons investments. But energy and security expert Michael Klare says the Pentagon and the Administration are missing the real existential threat: climate catastrophe will overwhelm both China’s military and ours. His recent piece in the Nation is The Real Existential Threat Is Our Overheating Planet. We also

We talk with Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, award-winning poet and now novelist, about The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois, just out from Harper Collins. Then, two young women build a literary empire around poetry and life lessons. We talk with Jade Dee and Wilnona Marie, the And I Thought Ladies. Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Honorée Fanonne Jeffers Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’ debut novel The Love Songs of W.E.B. Dubois is already racking up the kudos—and it’s only been out since August 24. Oprah picked it for her Book Club, the New York Times reviewer called it “quite simply the best book that I have read in a very, very long time,” and it’s up for numerous awards. So what’s it all about? The great writer Jacqueline Woodson—a former Writer’s Voice guest—describes it: “This sweeping, brilliant and beautiful narrative is at once a love song to Black girlhood, family, history, joy, pain… and so much more. In Jeffers’ deft hands, the story of race and love in America becomes the great American novel.” The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois is about a family through the centuries and also about one young descendant living in the contemporary world, discovering her family’s story. The author of five acclaimed books of poetry, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers brings her poetic lyricism to her prose in this, her debut novel. Jeffers is Professor of English at University of Oklahoma in Norman. Read a sample from The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois Jade Dee and Wilnona Marie, The And I Thought Ladies Francesca met Jade Dee and Wilnona Marie, The And I Thought Ladies, when they invited her onto their podcast. She Googled their work and found it includes a series of poetry books self-described as “literary life guides with w/ pop poetry,” called the And I Thought series, a “Miss-Fit Guide”, at least one podcast, at least two magazines, a store, a literary festival and more. They are a dynamic duo, but, more than that, they are two very thoughtful and energetic women who seek to make a difference in people’s lives with poetry. The And I Thought Ladies on Facebook Next week on Writer’s Voice,we talk with Julia Sweig about her acclaimed book about the White House years of Lady Bird Johnson, Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight. Don’t miss it!

We talk with recycling maven Jennie Romer about making the right recycling choices. Her book is Can I Recycle This? A Guide To Better Recycling And How To Reduce Single Use Plastics. Then, wildlife biologist Catherine Raven tells us about her bestselling memoir, Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio, on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Jennie Romer Have you ever stood in front of a recycling bin holding an everyday object and wondered, “Can I recycle this?” I’ll bet you have—lots of times. Have you ever just tossed it in not knowing the answer? That’s not re-cycling, that’s wish-cycling. It doesn’t make it any easier that recycling rules vary widely from place to place, leaving many of us scratching our heads at the simple act of throwing something away. But help is on the way! In her illustrated book Can I Recycle This?, Jennie Romer takes readers on a quick but informative tour of how recycling actually works and gives straightforward answers to whether dozens of common household objects can or cannot be recycled. Romer is a Legal Associate for the Surfrider Foundation’s Plastic Pollution Initiative. She helped author plastic bag bans in California and New York. Can I Recycle This was illustrated by Christie Young. Listen to a sample from Can I Recycle This? Catherine Raven When Catherine Raven finished her PhD in biology, she built herself a tiny cottage on an isolated plot of land in Montana. She was as emotionally isolated as she was physically, but she viewed the house as a way station, a temporary rest stop where she could gather her nerves and fill out applications for what she hoped would be a real job that would help her fit into society. Then one day she realized that a fox was showing up on her property every afternoon at 4:15 p.m. She had never had a regular visitor before. How do you even talk to a fox? She brought out her camping chair, sat as close to him as she dared, and began reading to him from The Little Prince. Her scientific training had taught her not to anthropomorphize animals, yet as she grew to know him, his personality revealed itself and they became friends. In her bestselling memoir Fox and I, Raven explores her remarkable friendship with the fox. Her beautiful descriptions of the land and the wild creatures she shares it with illumines the fellowship of Nature within which we all reside. Read An Excerpt from Fox and I Next Week on Writer’s Voice We talk with Honorée Fanonne Jeffers about her novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois.      

We talk with Elizabeth Hinton about her book, America on Fire: The Untold History Of Police Violence And Black Rebellion Since The 1960’s. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. Elizabeth Hinton The Black Lives Matter movement that erupted in 2014 when first Eric Garner and then Michael Brown were murdered by police is not the first time Black communities in America went out in the streets to protest police violence. In her brilliant book, America on Fire, historian Elizabeth Hinton takes the reader on a journey from Detroit in 1967 and Miami in 1980 to Los Angeles in 1992 and beyond to chart the persistence of structural racism and one of its primary consequences: what the White power structure called “riots” but what Black people call “rebellions.” The central lesson from these eruptions—that police violence invariably leads to community violence—continues to escape policymakers, who respond by further criminalizing entire groups instead of addressing the underlying causes. The results are the hugely expanded policing and prison regimes that shape the lives of so many Americans today. America on Fire is a powerful call to end structural racism and finally realize the American promise of full equality for all. Elizabeth Hinton is Associate Professor of History and African American Studies at Yale University and Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Next week on Writer’s Voice, we talk with wildlife biologist Catherine Raven about her memoir Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship. We also learn everything about recycling from Jenny Romer; her book is Can I Recycle This?