Episodes
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Jim Minick is the author or editor of eight books, including Without Warning: The Tornado of Udall, Kansas (nonfiction), “The Intimacy of Spoons” (poetry), Fire Is Your Water, (novel), and The Blueberry Years: A Memoir of Farm and Family. Minick’s work has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Oxford American, Orion, Shenandoah, The Sun, Conversations with Wendell Berry, Appalachian Journal, Wind, and The Sun. He serves as co-editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel.
Minick’s honors include the Jean Ritchie Fellowship in Appalachian Writing and the Fred Chappell Fellowship at UNC-Greensboro. Minick has also won awards from the Southern Independent Booksellers Association, Southern Environmental Law Center, The Virginia College Bookstore Association, Appalachian Writers Association, Radford University, and elsewhere. His poem “I Dream a Bean” was picked by Claudia Emerson for permanent display at the Tysons Corner/Metrorail Station. He’s garnered grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Augusta University, Georgia Humanities Council, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
To learn more about Jim: jim-minick.com
Interview Location: Smyth County, Virginia
Jim’s Books on the Bed:
The Meadow by James Galvin
I Am One of You Forever by Fred Chappell
Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers by Frank X Walker
The Mountains Have Come Closer by Jim Wayne Miller
Harper Single Volume American Literature, Third Edition
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Matt’s gifts for Jim:
The Song of Everything by Glenis Redmond
The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams
Jim's Bedside Books:
Our Southern Birds by Emma Bell Miles
The French Broad by Wilma Dykeman
Waking by Ron Rash
Divine Right’s Trip: A Novel of the Counterculture by Gurney Norman
The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Episode timeline:
0:00 - 6:45 — Introduction
6:46 - 41:10 Matt's gifts for Jim and Jim's story
41:11 - 1:55:05 — Jim's Books on the Bed
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Glenis Redmond is the First Poet Laureate of Greenville, South Carolina. She is a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, and a Cave Canem alumni. She has authored six books of poetry: Backbone (Underground Epics, 2000), Under the Sun (Main Street Rag, 2002), and What My Hand Say (Press 53, 2016), Listening Skin (Four Way Books), Three Harriets & Others (Finishing Line Press), and Praise Songs for Dave the Potter, Art by Jonathan Green, and Poetry by Glenis Redmond (University of Georgia Press).
Glenis was born on Shaw AFB in Sumter, South Carolina. She presently resides in Greenville. She was the founder of the Greenville Poetry Slam in the early 90’s. She received her MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College while touring full-time as a poet and mother-of-twins, Amber, and Celeste Sherer. She is now a Gaga to three grandchildren Julian and Paisley and newborn, Quinn.
Glenis has spent almost three decades touring the country as a poet and teaching artist. Since 2014, she has served as the mentor poet for the National Student Poets Program through Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. In the past she has prepared these exceptional youth poets to read at the Library of Congress, the Department of Education, and for First Lady Michelle Obama at The White House.
For more about Glenis: glenisredmond.com
Interview location: Greenville, South Carolina
Glenis' Books on the Bed:
Generations: A Memoir by Lucille Clifton
The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010
Gullah Spirit and Gullah Images by Jonathan Green
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
In Search of Color Everywhere by E. Ethelbert Miller (Editor) & Terrance Cummings (Illustrator)
June Jordan's Poetry for the People
Matt's gifts for Glenis:
Call It Horses by Jessie van Eerden
Searching for Dr. Harris by Margaret Humphreys
Episode timeline:
0:00-4:52 — Intro
4:53-58:19 - Glenis' story
58:20-1:58:28 - Glenis' Books on the Bed
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Mandi Fugate Sheffel was born and raised in Red Fox, KY. She owns and operates Read Spotted Newt, an independent bookstore in the coalfields of eastern Kentucky, and is currently the Sycamore Fund Project Coordinator at The Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky. She is the board vice chair of the Appalachian Arts Alliance and a Mountain Association board member. Mandi is a graduate of Eastern Kentucky University.
Visit Read Spotted Newt! readspottednewt.com
Read some of Mandi's recent writing:
Appalachia deserves more than coal or cages. - Lexington Herald Leader
We will rebuild in EKy. Then we must ask why 100-year floods are happening so often.
Interview location: Hazard, KY
Mandi’s Books on the Bed:
The Beatinest Boy by Jesse Stuart
Christy by Catherine Marshall
Clay’s Quilt by Silas House
Trampoline by Robert Gipe
Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith
Kinfolks: The Wilgus Stories by Gurney Norman
Matt’s gifts for Mandi:
O Pioneers! By Willa Cather
Outlawed by Anna North
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Kathryn Savage’s Groundglass: An Essay (Coffee House Press), explores topics of environmental justice and links between pollution and public health. Groundglass was named a best read of the year by the Sydney Morning Herald, a Yale Review Favorite Cultural Artifact of 2022, and was showcased in Orion Magazine, Lit Hub, and selected by EcoLit Books as a Best Environmental Book of 2022.
Recipient of the Academy of American Poets James Wright Prize, her writing across forms has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Jerome Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Ucross Foundation, and Tulsa Artist Fellowship. Savage has studied creative writing at The New School, holds an MFA in fiction from Bennington College, and an MFA in poetry from the University of Minnesota.
Recent writing appears or is forthcoming in American Short Fiction, BOMB Magazine, Ecotone Magazine, Guernica, VQR, World Literature Today, and the anthology Rewilding: Poems for the Environment.
Currently she is an assistant professor of creative writing at The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). She is at work on a collection of short stories.
To learn more about Kathryn: kathrynsavage.com
Interview location: Minneapolis, MN
Kathryn's Books on the Bed:
Escapes by Joy Williams
The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg
An Ideal Presence by Eduardo Berti
What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah
Fixer by Edgar Kunz
Dear Memory by Victoria Chang
Second Stack:
Sing to It: Stories by Amy Hempel
Wonderlands by Charles Baxter
Matt's gifts for Kathryn:
A History of Half-Birds by Caroline Harper New
Return the Innocent Earth by Wilma Dykeman
Episode timeline:
0:00-5:29 — Intro
5:30-29:22 — Kathryn's story, history in Minneapolis, & Groundglass
29:23-1:59:47 — Kathryn's Books on the Bed & Second Stack
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Dr. ZELDA LOCKHART holds a PhD in Expressive Art Therapies, an MA in Literature, and a certificate in writing, directing and editing from the NY Film Academy. Her work as an author and expressive arts consultant and educator centers on the power of story and nature to connect us across barriers and to heal our generations. She is winner of the Lambda Literary Foundation 2024 Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-career Novelist Prize. Her books include HarperCollins 2023 release Trinity (a novel) translated and released by HarperCollins France 2024 as Entends ma voix. Her other works include The Soul of the Full-Length Manuscript: Turning Life’s Wounds into the Gift of Literary Fiction, Memoir, or Poetry. Her other novels are Fifth Born which was a Barnes & Noble Discovery selection and a Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award finalist, Cold Running Creek a Black Caucus of the American Library Association Honor Fiction award winner, and Fifth Born II: The Hundredth Turtle a 2011 Lambda Literary Award finalist. Lockhart is Director at Her Story Garden Studios: Inspiring Black Women to Self-Define, Heal, and Liberate Through Our Stories & Nature.
To learn more about Zelda: zeldalockhart.com
Interview location: Durham, NC
Zelda’s Books on the Bed:
The Mimosa Tree by Vera and Bill Cleaver
The Black Notebooks by Toi Derricote
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Trinity by Zelda Lockhart
Matt’s gifts for Zelda:
The Last Children of Mill Creek by Vivian Gibson
Woman of Light by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
Episode timeline:
0:00-4:07 — Intro
4:08-9:08 — Matt presents gifts to Zelda
9:09-14:32 — Eliza Edens song "Garden of Sound" and ecology metaphor
14:33-1:49:35 — Zelda's Books on the Bed
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Remica Bingham-Risher, a native of Phoenix, Arizona, is an alumna of Old Dominion University and Bennington College. She is a Cave Canem fellow and Affrilachian Poet. Among other journals, her work has been published in the New York Times, the Writer’s Chronicle, New Letters, Callaloo and Essence. She is the author of Conversion (Lotus, 2006) winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award, What We Ask of Flesh (Etruscan, 2013) shortlisted for the Hurston/Wright Award and Starlight & Error (Diode, 2017) winner of the Diode Editions Book Award. Her first book of prose, Soul Culture: Black Poets, Books and Questions that Grew Me Up, was published by Beacon Press in 2022. Her next book of poems, Room Swept Home, was published by Wesleyan in February 2024. She is currently the Director of Quality Enhancement Plan Initiatives at Old Dominion University and resides in Norfolk, VA with her husband and children.
Learn more about Remica: remicabinghamrisher.com
Interview location: Norfolk, VA
Remica’s Books on the Bed:
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
Home by Toni Morrison
The Book of Light by Lucille Clifton
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Fast Animal by Tim Seibles
Matt’s gifts for Remica:
To ‘Joy My Freedom by Tera Hunter
Somerset Homecoming by Dorothy Spruill Redford
Episode timeline:
0:00-3:33 — Intro
3:34-28:17 — Remica's family history, new book Room Swept Home, reading poems
28:18-42:10 — Matt presents gifts to Remica
42:11-1:38:59 — Remica's Books on the Bed
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Welcome to Books on the Bed!
Logo design by Nathaniel Roy - nathanielroy.com
Theme music: Eliza Edens - "Ramble" (Instrumental) from Time Away From Time (2020)
More about Eliza: eliza-edens.com
