Episodios
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In his 1979 Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand wrote, âWe are as gods, so we might as well get good at it.â Based on his time on the Mississippi River, however, Boyce Upholt concludes âthat we do not make very good gods.â In the final pages of The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi, Upholt reflects, âThe river is an unappeasable god, and to react to it with fear and awe is not wrong. . . . Perhaps what people learn after thousands of years of living along one of the worldâs greatest rivers is that change is inevitable, that chaos will come. That the only way to survive is to take careâof yourself and of everyone else, human and beyond.â
Boyce Upholt is a ânature criticâ whose writing probes the relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world, especially in the U.S. South. Boyce grew up in the Connecticut suburbs and holds a bachelorâs degree from Haverford College and an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. His work has been published in the Atlantic, National Geographic, the Oxford American, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among other publications, and was awarded the 2019 James Beard Award for investigative journalism. His stories have been noted in the Best American Science & Nature and Best American Nonrequired Reading series. Boyce lives in New Orleans.
Book photo courtesy of Boyce Upholt.
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In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Lisa Malawski talks with local Madison author Ann Garvin.
Ann Garvin became an author at age fifty. Ann Garvin Ph.D. is a nurse, a professor, and USA Today Bestselling Author. She thinks everything is funny and a little bit sad. Ann writes stories about people who do too much in a world that asks too much from them.
Ann is the founder of the multiple award-winning Tall Poppy Writers where she is committed to helping women writers succeed. She is a sought-after speaker on writing, leadership and health and has taught extensively in NY, San Francisco, LA, Boston, and at festivals across the country and in Europe.
Lisa had Ann on Madison Book Beat in March 2024 for her book Thereâs No Coming Back from This which was published by Lake Union Publishing in 2024. Ann returned to the Madison Book Beat on 10/28 for her new book, Bummer Camp which was also published by Lake Union Publishing in September 2024.
It is difficult to write two fiction novels in one year, and Lisa discusses with Ann the amount of work that goes into accomplishing this.
One of the things that Lisa liked most about the previous interview with Ann was that she mentioned that a writer is an observer. Lisa has observed many things about Ann and their discussion takes a deep look at the loss of Annâs parents, love in Annâs life and an intense look at Annâs writing career.
Ann teaches in the low-residency Master of Fine Arts program at Drexel University and lives in Wisconsin with her anxious and overly protective dog, Peanut. For more information, visit www.anngarvin.com. Also check out Ann Garvinâs Please Come Sit By Me blog.
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Today on the show, incoming host Ella Saph speaks with the first-place winners in the 2024 Wisconsin People & Ideas Writing Contest. Cambridge writer Bob Wake took home the gold for his poem "Mending Ruth," and Madison poet Diya Abbas took home the prize for their poem âAl-Eashiq."
Both will present at a reading next week at the Wisconsin Book Festival, which will feature all the winners of the statewide 2024 Fiction & Poetry Contests. That reading is on Tuesday, October 29 at 7pm at Central Library.
About the guests:
Bob Wake is a writer and small press publisher in Cambridge, Wisconsin. He is the first-place winner of the 2024 Wisconsin People & Ideas Fiction Contest, which he also won in 2017. His short stories have appeared in Madison Magazine, The Madison Review, Rosebud Magazine, and in Wisconsin People & Ideas. He is a recipient of the Zona Gale Award for Short Fiction from the Council for Wisconsin Writers.
Diya Abbas is a first-generation Pakistani poet from the Midwest. She is the first-place poetry winner in the 2024 Wisconsin People & Ideas Writing Contest. Her poems are featured or forthcoming in RHINO, Foglifter, Adroit, diode, The Offing, BAHR Magazine, and others. She is currently studying Creative Writing and South Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin Madison through the First Wave program. Find more of their work at diyabbas.com.
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On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie speaks with festival director Jane Rotunda and author Jessica Calarco about her book Holding It Together, ahead of Calarcoâs appearance at the Wisconsin Book Festival on Thursday, October 17th.
Holding It Together: How Women Became Americaâs Safety Net chronicles the devastating consequences of our DIY society and traces its root causes by drawing together historical, media, and policy analyses and five years of Calarcoâs original research. With surveys of 4,000 parents and more than 400 hours of interviews across the socioeconomic, racial, and political spectrum, Calarco illustrates how women have been forced to bear the brunt of our broken system and why no one seems to care.
Jessica Calarco is a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. An expert on families, schools, and inequalities, and a mom of two, she is the author of multiple award-winning books and has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and Inside Higher Ed, as well as appeared on CNN, CNBC, NPR, and the BBC to discuss her research.
Learn more about Jessicaâs book and what this yearâs Book Festival has in store, and donât forget to check out the full calendar of events here!
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In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with E.M. Tran on her debut novel, Daughters of the New Year (2022, Hanover Square Press).
Daughters of the New Year is a novel about the three Trung sisters and their mother. Itâs also a novel about Vietnam and its long history of colonization at the hands of the Chinese, Japanese, and French. We catch glimpses of civil war and Americaâs devastating war in Vietnam. Itâs a novel about diaspora and remembering an increasingly distant and fading homeland. Itâs also a novel about New Orleans and the US South and how immigrant communities navigate their everyday lives.
E. M. Tran writes fiction and creative nonfiction. Her stories, essays, and reviews can be found in such places as the Georgia Review, Literary Hub, Joyland Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Harvard Review Online, and more. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Mississippi and a PhD in English & Creative Writing from Ohio University. Born and raised in New Orleans, she returned and currently lives there with her family. She was born in the year of the Earth Snake. Currently, she is at work on her sophomore novel and also publishes a weekly newsletter about the show Gilmore Girls.
Photo courtesy of E.M. Tran
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On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie speaks with author Jennifer Kabat about her memoir The Eighth Moon from Milkweed Editions, ahead of Kabatâs appearance at A Room of Oneâs Own on Tuesday, September 10th.
A rebellion, guns, and murder. When Jennifer Kabat moves to the Catskills, she has no idea it was the site of the Anti-Rent War, an early episode of American rural populism. As she forges friendships with her new neighbors and explores the countryside on logging roads and rutted lanesâfinding meadows dotted with milkweed in bloom, saffron salamanders, a blood moon rising over Munsee, Oneida, and Mohawk landâshe slowly learns of the 1840s uprising, when poor tenant farmers fought to redistribute their landlordsâ vast estates. In the farmersâ socialist dreams, she discovers connections to her parentsâ collectivist values, as well as to our current moment. Threaded with historical documents, the natural world, and the work of writers like Adrienne Rich and Elizabeth Hardwick, Kabat weaves a capacious memoir, where the past comes alive in the present.
Jennifer Kabatâs diptych The Eighth Moon and Nightshining are being published by Milkweed Editions in 2024 and 2025. Sheâs been awarded a Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for her criticism, and the books were supported by grants from the Silvers Foundation and NYFA. Her essays and criticism have appeared in 4 Columns, Frieze, Granta, The White Review, BOMB, Harperâs, The Believer, and McSweeneyâs as well as Best American Essays. She lives in rural New York, serves in her local fire department and teaches in the Design Research MA program at SVA.
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In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Lisa Malawski talks with Kathleen Paris about her book Gentle Comforts For Women Grieving the Loss of a Beloved Life Companion.
As an author, educator, and management consultant, Paris has assisted organizations over the past thirty years to plan for new realities and improve their systems and organizational climate. She currently holds the title of Distinguished Consultant Emeritus from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Paris has consulted in the United States and internationally in Canada, Cyprus, France,
Guam, Switzerland, Virgin Islands, and the UK Kathleen lost her beloved husband Matt Cullen, of twenty-five years in 2018. She has been reaching out ever since to other grieving women.
The dedication of her book reads âTo my husband, Matt Cullen the best person I ever knew.â
One of the frequently asked questions of Kathleen, is why did you write Gentle Comforts?
Kathleenâs response is that she started journaling the day her husband died and from then on wrote to him every night. The journal was the foundation of Gentle Comforts. And as the months went on, it occurred to Kathleen that she could take the worst thing that ever happened to her and help others in the same situation.Gentle Comforts for Women Grieving the Loss of a Beloved Life Companion was published by ACTA Publications in 2024. The book is organized to follow a woman-in-mourningâs experiences over time. There is journaling space with short prompt questions for each reflection. There are easy healthy recipes for one person included for each of the 50 topics. The book is written in a gentle and encouraging voice of one who has been there. So many of us have lost someone in our lives, and the hope was that this show could touch you in some way, ease your burden, and for you to know that there are so many of us struggling with our losses. Here is the Irish quote from the front of Kathleenâs book: âDeath leaves a heartache no one can heal. Love leaves a memory no one can steal.â
A note from Kathleen Paris:
Friday, August 30 is National Grief Awareness Day. Every year it is on August 30.
Aimed at educating people about grief, providing resources and helping people feel less alone.
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In this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Sara Batkie speaks with Milwaukee-based author Katharine Beutner about her Edna Ferber Award-winning novel, Killingly, which is out now in paperback from Soho Crime.
Massachusetts, 1897: Bertha Mellish, âthe most peculiar, quiet, reserved girlâ at Mount Holyoke College, is missing. As a search team dredges the pond where Bertha might have drowned, her panicked father and sister arrive desperate to find some clue to her fate or state of mind. Berthaâs best friend, Agnes, a scholarly loner studying medicine, might know the truth, but she is being unhelpfully tightlipped, inciting the suspicions of Berthaâs family, her classmates, and the private investigator hired by the Mellish family doctor. As secrets from Agnesâs and Berthaâs lives come to light, so do the competing agendas driving each person who is searching for Bertha. Where did Bertha go? Who would want to hurt her? And could she still be alive?
Katharine Beutner takes a real-life unsolved mystery and crafts it into an unforgettable historical portrait of academia, family trauma, and the risks faced by women who dared to pursue unconventional paths at the end of the 19th century. Katharine is an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; previously, she taught in Ohio and Hawai`i. She earned a BA in Classical Studies at Smith College and an MA in English (creative writing) and a PhD in English literature at the University of Texas at Austin. Her first novel, Alcestis, won the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award and was a finalist for other awards, including the Lambda Literary Associationâs Lesbian Debut Fiction Award.
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In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with Henry Wise on his debut novel, Holy City (2024, Grove Atlantic Press).
Holy City is a novel that grabs your attention by the opening sentence and propels you into a world of crime, guilt, unrealized desire, and vanquished hopes and dreams. The narrative shuttles between Richmond, Virginiaâthe eponymous Holy Cityâand the rural county of Euphoria. Anything but euphoric, itâs peopled by a cast of characters both burned out on the passage of time and not very optimistic about the present. We encounter people enduring the harsh realities of poverty, the legacies of racism, the personal and historical ghosts of the past, as well as the fickleness of the small town legal system. Everyoneâs running from something, and everyoneâs got something to hide. We encounter this world through the eyes of Deputy Sheriff Will Seems, a prodigal son of sorts who returns to Euphoria from Richmond after a decade away. While immediately embroiled in the investigation of a brutal homicide, our brooding protagonist must navigate a guilty past, a fraught relationship with family, and an increasingly suspect county Sheriff. Its fast pacing is complemented by a striking poetic lyricism that demands regularly slowing down and relishing in the talents of this poet-turned-novelist.
Henry Wise is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and the University of Mississippi MFA Program. His work has appeared in Shenandoah, Nixes Mate, Radar Poetry, Clackamas, and elsewhere. His nonfiction and photography have appeared in Southern Cultures. Holy City is his first novel.
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In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Lisa Malawski talks with Robin and Joan
Rolfs about their book Hearthstone: Americaâs Electrical National Treasure.
Joan and Rob have been enthralled with Hearthstone since the 1970âs when they
moved to the Fox Cities. Joan developed a successful Interior Design program at Fox
Valley Technical College in 1971.
In 1986, Joan was contacted by a member of The Friends of Hearthstone Board and
invited to become involved with the restoration of Hearthstone. Rob was also invited
because of his background in electronics and electricity. Realizing the Edison
connection and the historical importance of the house, the Rolfs accepted.
In 1990, they were given the task to develop the Hydro-Adventure Exhibit in the lower
level of Hearthstone. The exhibit increased public awareness of the role of electricity in
daily lives and the transformation which occurred in society as a result of Thomas A.
Edisonâs inventions and Henry Rogerâs vision for implementation.
Hearthstone contains all the original architecture and electrical light fixtures from when
the home was built in 1882. The Rolfs worked with the Edison National Historical Park
in Orange, NJ and one day during their visit met Chad Shapiro, a collector and historian
of early lighting. He shared his knowledge and provided the Rolfs with copies of original
Bergmann lighting catalogs from 1882-1884.
Approximately thirty years later, as the Rolfs researched the hanging light fixtures
(electroliers) and wall sconces, they concluded the majority of these light fixtures were
the original Sigmund Bergmann fixtures dating to 1882. The significance of these
fixtures is they are the earliest surviving examples of Bermann electroliers and sconces
in the world! This inspired the Rolfs to write Hearthstone: Americaâs Electrical National
Treasure.
In this episode, Lisa discusses the Rolfs passions for all things Thomas Edison, their
volunteerism at Hearthstone, antique phonographs, records, writing and their shared
love for research.
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In her fourth collection, Driftless Area-based poet Nikki Wallschlaeger further proves herself as a singular poet of astonishing emotional depth and formal range. Hold Your Own is a steadfast search for peace, self-acceptance, and pleasure in a world that makes those basic rights an everyday challenge for Black women. It was published in May 2024 by Copper Canyon Press.
Nikki joins host Sara Batkie for a conversation about getting the right rhythm, the joys of working with books every day, and the natural beauty of her home state.
Nikki Wallschlaegerâs work has been featured in The Nation, Brick, American Poetry Review, Witness, Kenyon Review, Poetry, and others. She is the author of the full-length collections Waterbaby (Copper Canyon Press, 2021), Houses (Horseless Press 2015), and Crawlspace (Bloof 2017), as well as the graphic book I Hate Telling You How I Really Feel (2019) from Bloof Books. She is also the author of an artist book called âOperation USAâ through the Baltimore-based book arts group Container, a project acquired by Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee.
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In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Lisa Malawski talks with Richard Sweitzer about his book ODE The Scion of Nerikan. Richard is award-winning author and longtime morning radio host. He received his Masterâs of Arts degree in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Richard is the author and publisher of ODE The Scion of Nerikan which was published in 2023. The book is about an immortal monster who is searching for a way to die, and the little girl who gives him reason to live...for a little longer.
Richard created an ODE Bingo card which he hands out at book signings and there is a tiny independent book store near his home that he places these cards in. Some of the boxes on the Bingo card ask the reader if they threw the book, hugged the book. laughed, cried and more.
Richard always wanted to publish his books traditionally, but after three false starts working with literary agents, he decided to publish his own book. The agents he had worked with offered some great advice, but he felt the story was drifting away from the adventure which he created. When Richard is not writing, he hosts a popular morning radio show in central Wisconsin. He has been with this show for more than thirty years.
In this episode, Richard reads from his book, discusses self-publishing, marketing, artificial intelligence, going to school at age thirty, being a radio host and his love of fantasy.
Lisa thanks Richard for his message to the audience: Try something new even if itâs scary. Take that course, make that change. Be afraid and do it anyway.
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Richard Scott Larson's debut The Long Hallway (University of Wisconsin Press, April 2024) is a lyrical memoir that expresses a boyâs search for identity while navigating the darkness and isolation of a deeply private inner world.
Growing up queer, closeted, and afraid, Richard Scott Larson found expression for his interior life in horror films, especially John Carpenterâs 1978 classic, Halloween. He developed an intense childhood identification with Michael Myers, Carpenterâs inscrutable masked villain, as well as Michaelâs potential victims. In The Long Hallway, Larson scrutinizes this identification, meditating on horror as a metaphor for the torments of the closet.
Richard joins host Sara Batkie for a conversation about the masks we wear, the horrors of suburbia, and finding the right home for your work.
Richard Scott Larson is a queer writer and critic. His debut memoir, The Long Hallway, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press. Born and raised in the suburbs of St. Louis, he studied literature and film criticism at Hunter College and earned his MFA from New York University.
He has received fellowships from MacDowell and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and his work has been supported by residencies from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Paragraph Workspace for Writers, La Porte Peinte, and the Willa Cather Foundation. Heâs an active member of the National Book Critics Circle, and his writing has been recognized twice by The Best American Essays.
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In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with Priti Srivastava about their novel The Nagini Anarchy, self-published in 2023.
Priti Srivastava lives in Madison, Wisconsin with their best friends working to create inclusive spaces so that one day everyone will feel as though they belong. When Priti isnât working or doing chores, they enjoy playing video games, making their friends laugh, eating samosas, and sitting quietly. Priti loves to connect with readers - check out thechaihouse.org to learn more or to request a virtual visit with your book club.
The Nagini Anarchy is the fourth novel set in the world of The Chai House. As readers we follow three protagonistsâAna, Prem, and Janiâas they encounter the effects of a patriarchal society intent on environmental destruction for material gain. While each characterâs narrative occurs in three distinct time periods, storylines begin to blur and intersect as the novel gains momentum. At the novelâs center is a stepwell. Designed as a place for weary travelers to find fresh water and rest, it also serves as an enduring nature preserve, particularly for snakes, against encroaching development. Tended to by the mercurial Manassa, the stepwell becomes both a place of mystery and supernatural transformation as the characters learn to shed their pasts just as a serpent sheds her skin.
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In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Lisa Malawski talks with Rachel Werner
about her childrenâs book, Moving and Grooving to Fillmoreâs Beat and her cookbook,
Macro Cooking Made Simple.
Rachel is a model, an author, a poet, a book reviewer, the founder of The Little Book
Project, a freelance writer and digital medical consultant, teaching artist, certified holistic
nutritionist, certified yoga instructor and mindfulness practitioner. Rachel has a daughter
named Phoebe and a dog named Butter.
Moving and Grooving to Fillmoreâs Beat is a beautiful story about the historical Fillmore
District in San Francisco, CA. It teaches children about the Fillmore Districtâs creative
legacy and names some of the famous artists at the Fillmore such as Carlos Santana
and Maya Angelou.
Macro Cooking Made Simple has fifty plus recipes for clean eating and healthy living.
Rachel has always had a love-hate relationship with food. Rachel was diagnosed with
an eating disorder at the age of 19. Exploring the creative process of eating was a
complete game changer for Rachel in regard to her health and her career.
In this episode, Rachel shares two of her poems and reads one of her daughterâs
poems.
Lisa thanks Rachel for sharing her many talents, and for always being curious in all
things.
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Madison author Beth Nguyenâs latest book Owner of a Lonely Heart (Scribner, July 2023) is a memoir about parenthood, absence, and the condition of being a refugee: the story of Bethâs relationship with her mother.
At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her family fled Saigon for America. Only Bethâs mother stayedâor was leftâbehind, and they did not meet again until Beth was nineteen. Over the course of her adult life, she and her mother have spent less than twenty-four hours together. It was named a Best Memoir of 2023 by Oprah Daily, and was selected by Time, NPR, and BookPage as a Best Book of 2023.
Beth joins host Sara Batkie ahead of the paperback release for a conversation about the expectations of motherhood, changing her name, and the fallibility of memory.
Beth Nguyen is the author of four books, most recently the memoir Owner of a Lonely Heart, published by Scribner in 2023. Owner of a Lonely Heart was a New York Times Editorsâ Choice pick and was named a best book of 2023 by NPR, Time, Oprah Daily, and BookPage. Nguyenâs three previous books, the memoir Stealing Buddhaâs Dinner and the novels Short Girls and Pioneer Girl, were published by Viking Penguin. Her awards and honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, a PEN/Jerard Award from the PEN American Center, a Bread Loaf fellowship, and best book of the year honors from the Chicago Tribune and Library Journal. Her books have been included in community and university read programs around the country. Nguyenâs work has also appeared in numerous anthologies and publications including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times, Literary Hub, Time Magazine, and The Best American Essays.
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Nguyen was born in Saigon. When she was a baby, she and her family came to the United States as refugees and were resettled in Michigan, where Nguyen grew up. She received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan and is currently a professor in the creative writing program at the University of WisconsinâMadison.
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In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with poet Daniel Khalastchi about hist new collection The Story of Your Obstinate Survival (2024, University of Wisconsin Press).
The Story of Your Obstinate Survival is a propulsive collection. Itâs very funny, uncannily mundane and starkly surreal. The poems are a collision of juxtapositions and images, each one brimming with a vigor and vitality that demands re-reading, reading aloud, and maybe even setting to music. The lyrical wordplay will stop you in your tracks, either with laughter or with an appreciation for the delightfully weird scenes unfolding before you. The poems speak to an obstinate persistence, to enduring beyond a routinely felt sense of an ending.
Daniel Khalastchi is an Iraqi Jewish American. A graduate of the Iowa Writersâ Workshop and a former fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, he is the author of four books of poetryâManoleria (Tupelo Press), Tradition (McSweeneyâs), American Parables (University of Wisconsin Press, winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry), and The Story of Your Obstinate Survival (University of Wisconsin Press). His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The American Poetry Review, The Believer Logger, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Electric Lit, Granta, The Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, and Best American Experimental Writing. Daniel has taught advanced writing, literature, and publishing courses at Augustana College, Marquette University, and the University of Iowa, most recently as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Iowa Writersâ Workshop. He currently lives in Iowa City where he directs the University of Iowaâs Magid Center for Writing. He is the cofounder and managing editor of Rescue Press.
Author photo courtesy of University of Wisconsin Press
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In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Lisa Malawski talks with Angela Trudell Vasquez, who until recently, was the City of Madison Poet Laureate.
Trudell Vasquez is a poet, writer, performer, and activist. Her most recent chapbook, My People Redux (2022, Finishing Line Press) honors her heritage, contending with generational hardships immigrant families face in making a life in America. The chapbook won first place in the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Chapbook Contest for 2022.
Angie began writing seriously when she was seven years old. Her grandmother purchased a diary for her, and this is where she would write her first few lines. Angie tells us that she learned the power of words make her feel whole, well-fed, and warm.
Lisa discusses Angieâs position as the former Madison Poet Laureate, poetry on the Madison Transit buses, Art Night Books, Angelaâs day job as Director of Human Resources for End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin, and her work on her memoir.
Additionally, Lisa jokes with Angie about some things she has learned about her, such as her love for Etta James and why she sometimes wears two different colored tights to a poetry reading.
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Cynthia Marie Hoffmanâs latest book of prose poetry, Exploding Head (Persea Books, February 2024) is described as an OCD memoir in prose poems.
It chronicles her childhood onset and adult journey through obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which manifests in fearful obsessions and counting compulsions that impact her relationship to motherhood, religion, and the larger world. Itâs been called âMagnificently propulsive and evocativeâ by Rebecca Morgan Frank. Megan Wildhood said, âI want someone to make a haunted house of these poems.â
She joins newest host, Sara Batkie, for a conversation about mental health, poetry as personal history, and what itâs like to be a working writer in Madison.
In addition to Exploding Head, Cynthia Marie Hoffman is the author of three previous collections of poetry: Sightseer, Paper Doll Fetus, and Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones. She is the recipient of a Diane Middlebrook Fellowship in Poetry at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Wisconsin Arts Board, and a Directorâs Guest fellowship at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Italy.
Cynthia has taught creative writing and composition at George Mason University, the University of Wisconsin, and Edgewood College. She works at an electrical engineering firm in Madison, WI, where she lives with her husband and teenage child. You can find more about her at her website, cynthiamariehoffman.com and follow her on Instagram @cynthiamariehoffman.
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How do you make change at organizations that resemble hard granite, and arenât designed to bend?
Only by patiently and persistently nudging them forward day-by-day, one improvement at a time, according to the authors of Bending Granite: 30+ true stories of leading change (Acta Publications, 2022). Itâs a compilation of stories from leaders, mostly in and around Madison, writing about the organizations they loved and sought to improve.
Itâs a book that promises âno big bang, no instant pudding, no quick fixes.â Nonetheless, it might lend insight for managers on effectively changing the status quo.
On todayâs show, host David Ahrens speaks with Tom Mosgaller and Michael Williamson, two of the volumeâs co-editors.Mosgaller and Williamson join Ahrens in the studio to talk about the nature of leadership, the role of quality assurance, and the importance of paying attention to purpose, processes, and people.
Michael Williamson has led many complex public organization, including stints as chief of staff for Madison Mayor Joe Sensenbrenner, assistant to UW-Madison chancellor Donna Shalala, and policy assistant to Wisconsin Governor Lee Dreyfus.
Williamson is the former Executive Director of the State of Wisconsin Investment Board, which manages the Wisconsin Retirement Systemâs trust funds. Now retired, he continues to serve on a variety of nonprofit boards.
Tom Mosgaller describes himself as a âchange agent by nature, and leader by nurture.â For more than a dozen years, he served as the City of Madisonâs Director of Organizational Development and Training. In his tenure, the cityâs quality assurance work received worldwide recognition as a pioneering effort and was recognized by the American Society for Quality (ASQ).
Mosgaller later worked as Director of Change Management for NIATx, a division of the UW Madison School of Engineering that works to improve the delivery of community-based health services.
He is past President and Chairman of the Board of the American Society for Quality and has served as a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award examiner and judge for the Wisconsin Forward Award. He now works as a consultant through his business, Gnarly Oaks.
Find more about Bending Granite â including interviews and resources â at bendinggranite.org.
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