Podcast

Andreá Williams talks ‘Dividing Lines’ on News Books in African American Studies

by Phillip Witteveen May 17, 2013

Author Andreá Williams joined host Vershawn Young to talk about her new book Dividing Lines: Class Anxiety and Postbellum Black Fiction on the New Books Network’s New Books in African American Studies. The book examines the beginnings of class anxiety and intraracial class tensions in postbellum black communities as they manifest themselves in the literature of that time period. Williams incorporates the fiction of such authors as Sutton E. Griggs, Charles Chesnutt, and W.E.B. DuBois, as the first generations of freed men and women came to terms with their new social status. Her perspective on this more complex culture was framed by [...]

Joseph Geha discusses ‘Lebanese Blonde’ on Iowa Public Radio

by Brianne Johnson February 13, 2013

Lebanese Blonde may be a work of fiction, but, for author Joseph Geha, the novel hits close to home. That home is in the “Little Syria” community of Toledo, Ohio, and during an interview that recently aired on Iowa Public Radio, Geha discussed the places, experiences, and people that inspired the book. “The people are made up,” Geha said in the interview with “Talk of Iowa,” “But they’re founded on people I grew up with.” As an example, Geha names his father as a dominant source of inspiration for a character named Uncle Waxy. He also describes the urgency to “work hard [and] [...]

‘Elevator Music’ author Joseph Lanza discusses the future of Muzak on WNYC’s “The Takeaway”

by Brianne Johnson February 11, 2013

Following the announcement last week that the company that owns Muzak® will be retiring the name, WNYC’s “The Takeaway” host John Hockenberry spoke with Joseph Lanza, author of Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other Moodsong, about the often misunderstood musical genre. In the interview, Lanza discusses the future of the Muzak® Corporation, which he describes as “the G.E. [General Electric Company] of background music.” “[Muzak®] will be a company, but they probably will not be using the word ‘muzak’ anymore, and they’re not really gonna be piping very much of any elevator music any more….It’s like a company that produces all kinds [...]

Blaine Pardoe discusses ‘Secret Witness’ on ‘It’s a Crime’

by Brianne Johnson October 24, 2012

As described by Margaret McLean, host of “It’s a Crime,” Blaine Pardoe is “dredging up the past, stirring the pot, and revisiting — reopening — wounds by discussing a controversial case that rocked the small town of Marshall, Michigan” in Secret Witness: The Untold Story of the 1967 Bombing in Marshall, Michigan. In the interview (which starts at the 48-minute mark of the podcast), Pardoe discusses the “remarkable” forensic investigation that was conducted in an effort to find out who killed a well-liked woman with a mail bomb “in the days pre-CSI [and] pre-DNA-testing; done with hands-on police work.” Secret Witness, which Publishers Weekly compared to [...]

‘LGBT Youth’ authors take to radio, Boston Globe, Huffington Post

by Shaun Manning June 13, 2012

Jason Cianciotto and Sean Cahill’s new book, LGBT Youth in America’s Schools, has been receiving glowing reviews from a variety of publications, including the School Library Journal, Instinct magazine, Gay Calgary Magazine, and This Week in Texas. The authors have also been very active in advocating their book’s themes, penning op-eds in the Rainbow Times and Boston Globe, conducting a Voice to Voice feature for the Huffington Post, and appearing on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Joy Cardin Show. “Young people are coming out at younger ages,” Cahill told Cardin’s audience. “Back in the 1980s, people came out maybe around age 20, [...]

← Previous Entries