2019 Interviews – LIVING WRITERS

2019 Interviews

  • Adrienne Brodeur
    Guest host Amanda Uhle speaks with Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game (HMH, 2019) about keeping our parents’ secrets, the art of memoir writing, and gourmet meals by the sea. Brodeur co-founded the fiction magazine Zoetrope: All-Story with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, was an editor at Harcourt, and currently serves as Executive Director of Aspen Words, a …

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  • Jac Jemc
    Jac Jemc reads from False Bingo (FSG Originals 2019). We talk about tactical elements of the writing life.  We also talk about being playful, about finding and building community, and about a frog.
  • Arthur Sze
    Arthur Sze reads from Sight Lines, (Copper Canyon Press 2019) the 2019 National Book Award winner for poetry. We talk about poems in a series, the natural world, and language systems.
  • Jonathan Safran Foer
    Jonathan Safran Foer talks about We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2019).  We talk about climate change mattering in our daily lives, about the power of choices, and about burgers, and lions.
  • Safa Al Ahmad
    Freelance journalist/filmmaker and 2019 Wallenberg Medalist Safa Al Ahmad talks about her documentaries, including  Saudi’s Secret Uprising (2014) and Targeting Yemen (2019).  We talk about activism, the power of reporting, access, and editing. We also talk about moral responsibility to the person and the story.
  • Joe Caslin
    Artist and teacher Joe Caslin talks about his latest multimedia project The Volunteers. We talk about creating large scale public murals, activism, and community. We also talk about metaphor and stories and empathy.
  • Jeannie Gaffigan
    Jeannie Gaffigan reads from When Life Gives You Pears (Grand Central Publishing 2019). We talk about memoir, comedy writing and The Imagine Society.  We also talk about family, faith, and healing.
  • Ryan Walsh
    Ryan Walsh reads from his book of poems Reckonings (Baobab 2019). We talk about a poem’s responsibility, connecting across time,  and a spelter zinc plant.
  • Markus Zusak
    Markus Zusak reads from Bridge of Clay (Knopf 2018). We talk about the lives of boys, long projects, structure and redemption.
  • CM Burroughs
    CM Burroughs reads poems from The Vital System (Tupelo Press 2012). We talk about a sister, a red bird, experimental forms, and choosing art. We also get a preview of poems from Master Suffering out in 2020 with Tupelo Press.
  • Michigan Quarterly Review
    Michigan Quarterly Review editor Khaled Mattawa, guest editor Benjamin Paloff and contributor Jeremiah Chamberlin talk about the Fall 2019 issue of Michigan Quarterly Review: What Does Europe Want Now?  We talk about MQR’s mission, its history since 1962, and its future.  We also talk about the issue’s central question, and the poetry, fiction, non-fiction, interviews …

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  • Yevgenia Albats
    Yevgenia Albats talks about her work with The New Times, Absolute Albats and her book The State Within the State (FSG 1994). We also talk about investigative journalism, radio, the KGB, and her role as the inaugural International Institute Distinguished Faculty Fellow for 2019-2020.
  • Lo Dagerman + Nancy Pick
    Lo Dagerman and Nancy Pick read from The Writer and The Refugee (originally published by Norstedts Förlag, Stockholm 2017; English translation 2019). We talk about being a detective in your own family mystery, long term research projects, theater, powerful mothers, inspiration, and translation.
  • Wayétu Moore
    Wayétu Moore reads from She Would Be King (Graywolf Press 2018). We talk about magical realism, origin stories, Liberia, and One Moore Book.
  • Joanna Howard
    Summer host Amanda Uhle talks with Joanna Howard, author of the novel Foreign Correspondent and three short story collections. Her memoir, Rerun Era, is due out in October 2019 from McSweeney’s. We talk about memory and memoir, The Jeffersons, MASH, and growing up in rural America.
  • Gala Mukomolova
    Gala Mukomolov reads poems from Without Protection (Coffee House Press 2019). We talk about fierceness and vulnerability, fairytales, and astrology.
  • Khaled Mattawa
    Khaled Mattawa reads poems from Mare Nostrum (Sarabande Books/Quarternote Chapbook Series #16). We talk about emotion of displacement, forms and songs, narrative and character, and lyric as witness and as call to action.
  • Shelly Oria
    Summer host Amanda Uhle talks with Shelly Oria, author of New York 1, Tel Aviv 0 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2014), and coauthor of the digital novella, CLEAN, commissioned by WeTransfer and McSweeney’s.  In September of 2019, Indelible in the Hippocampus, an anthology of writings from the #metoo movement, compiled and edited by Oria, will be …

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  • Rebecca Clarren
    Novelist and journalist Rebecca Clarren (KICKDOWN, Skyhorse Publishing, 2018) reads from her novel, a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. Summer host Amanda Uhle and Rebecca Clarren talk about writing with a social cause in mind, journalistically reporting a novel, and the American West. We also consider whether KICKDOWN is maybe part of a …

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  • Sarah Vowell
    Summer host Amanda Uhle talks with historian, author, journalist, essayist, and actress Sarah Vowell. Vowell has written seven nonfiction books on American history and culture, was a contributing editor to This American Life  from 1996 to 2008, and was the voice of Violet Parr in the animated film The Incredibles and its sequel. We talk about what it …

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  • Simon Callow
    Frank Uhle talks with actor, director, and writer Simon Callow, author of the memoir Being an Actor and acclaimed biographies of Charles Dickens, Richard Wagner, and Charles Laughton. Callow is working on the fourth and final volume of his definitive account of the life of Orson Welles for Jonathan Cape/Viking. They discuss life on the British …

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  • 826michigan Student Writers
    Summer host Amanda Uhle talks with 826michigan students Hanako, Ashley Camila, and Ofelia who read their original writing, recently published in an 826michigan chapbook. Amanda and Program Coordinator Megan Gilson talk about writing for an audience or for oneself and the creative energy of writing in a community of other writers There are also book recommendations from …

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  • Emmy Kastner
    Summer host Amanda Uhle talks with Emmy Kastner about her book series Nerdy Babies (Macmillan 2019).
  • Lisa Taddeo
    Summer host Amanda Uhle talks with Lisa Taddeo, author of Three Women (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster 2019), about women’s desire and how it’s intertwined with judgement from others, how to build layered and complicated characters as a journalist, and the incredible feat of reporting on the lives of these three American women over the course …

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