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Madison BookBeat

145 episodes - English - Latest episode: 10 days ago - ★★★★★ - 3 ratings

Madison BookBeat highlights local Wisconsin authors and authors coming to Madison for book events. It airs every Monday afternoon at 1pm on WORT FM .

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Episodes

Bending Granite Tells Tales Of Leading Organizational Change

April 08, 2024 17:35 - 52 minutes - 119 MB

How do you make change at organizations that resemble hard granite, and aren’t 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). It’s a compilation of stories from leaders, mostly in and around Madison, writing about the organizations they loved and sought to improve. It’s a book that promises “no big bang, no instant pudd...

Ann Garvin On Writing Her First Book At Age Fifty

March 19, 2024 19:29 - 50 minutes - 114 MB

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. She has now written five books. Ann Garvin is a nurse, a professor, and USA Today Bestselling Author. She thinks everything is funny and a little bit sad. Ann writes stories about women with a good sense of humor 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 c...

Cynthia Simmons On The “Wrong Kind Of Paper”

March 11, 2024 17:00 - 52 minutes - 119 MB

Hallie Linden yearns to write for the New York Times. At the moment, she’s stuck at a daily newspaper in tiny Green Meadow, Indiana, a town known for its amusement park and nothing else. It’s 1989, and juicy reporting jobs are hard to find. She resolves to work hard, win a few awards, and then welcome the job offers. In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host David Ahrens speaks with Cynthia Simmons. She’s author of a recent novel called Wrong Kind of Paper, the story of a young reporter in...

Fragile Institutions: Shibani Mahtani And Timothy McLaughlin on the 2019 Protests in Hong Kong

March 04, 2024 18:00 - 51 minutes - 71.1 MB

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with journalists Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin for a conversation on their book Among the Braves: Hope, Struggle, and Exile in the Battle for Hong Kong and the Future of Global Democracy (2023, Hachette Books). Among the Braves is a narrative history of the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong told through the eyes of four activists named Finn, Tommy, Chu, and Gwyneth. Imbedded reporters Mahtani and McLaughlin give...

Jacquelyn Mitchard On The Importance of Titles

February 26, 2024 18:43 - 35 minutes - 81 MB

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Lisa Malawski talks with prolific author Jacquelyn Mitchard. Mitchard is now a frequent lecturer and professor of fiction and creative nonfiction at the Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpellier. She once worked as a journalist at several Wisconsin newspapers, including the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Capital Times, where her husband also worked before his sudden death - a tragedy that prompted her to write her first book. Lisa interviewe...

A conversation with Greg Mickells, retiring director of Madison Public Library

February 12, 2024 18:00 - 53 minutes - 123 MB

For more than a decade, Greg Mickells led the Madison Public Library. He's responsible for a significant transformation of the Madison library system. His tenure as Director took him to three continents, and to the White House in 2016, when Madison Public Library was recognized with a National Medal for Museum and Library Service. Additional awards received under Mickells' leadership include a Wisconsin Innovation Award for "The Bubbler" program, and as a Top Innovator by the Urban Librarie...

It’s Not Nothing: Essayist Peter Coviello on How Our Favorite Books and Songs Help Us Make Worlds Together

February 05, 2024 19:58 - 529 MB

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with Peter Coviello on his book of essays Is There God After Prince? Dispatches from an Age of Last Things (2023, University of Chicago Press). Exuberant, effusive, rye, and incisive, this collection of essays analyze a wide range of cultural objects in order to shore up some modicum of consolation against an intractable sense of impending doom. By focusing on beloved novels, films, and songs and the joyful connections they hel...

Madison's Shoshauna Shy on bringing poetry to the public

January 29, 2024 18:17 - 48 minutes - 112 MB

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Lisa Malawski talks with local poet Shoshauna Shy. Shoshauna Shy has been involved in local poetry and literary events for decades. She founded the Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf program in 2004, a project with the mission of placing poetry in public places where it isn't expected. She's previously worked for the Wisconsin Humanities Council, where she helped create, coordinate and facilitate poetry programs for the Wisconsin Book Festival when it was...

Heather Swan’s Lyrical Language Of Beauty And Devastation

January 23, 2024 04:08 - 52 minutes - 121 MB

On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Cole Erickson interviews Heather Swan about her latest book Dandelion, a collection of poetry which explores our uniquely human relationship with this natural world, not only in its wondrous beauty, but also in its devastation and fragility. About the guest: Heather Swan is a poet, non-fiction writer, and educator in Madison. Her poetry includes the collection A Kinship with Ash,  which was a finalist for the ASLE Book Award, and her chapbook The E...

Thomas Pearson, Author Of An Ordinary Future, On Disability And Difference

January 08, 2024 19:48 - 53 minutes - 72.8 MB

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host David Ahrens talks with with Thomas Pearson. Thomas Pearson is a professor of anthropology at UW-Stout, where he also leads the social science department. As a cultural anthropologist, he understands and appreciates the diversity of cultures and expressions of a common humanity. After the birth of his daughter, who has Down’s Syndrome, he documents his struggle towards broadening the concept of humanity to all people-including those who are differ...

The Dane County Farmers' Market Cookbook With Food Writer Terese Allen

December 11, 2023 18:00 - 48 minutes - 111 MB

The Dane County Farmers' Market is the largest producers-only farmers market in the nation. Last year, it celebrated its 50th anniversary. In celebration of that significant milestone, the DCFM has released a hardcover, full-color, 258-page cookbook. The Dane County Farmers' Market Cookbook (published this year by Little Creek Press) features 125 recipes that give a global spin to locally-sourced ingredients. With a foreword written by chef Tory Miller, and photographs by Bill Lubing, the ...

Prof. Stephen Kantrowitz, ”Citizens Of A Stolen Land: A Ho-Chunk History Of The 19th Century United States.”

November 28, 2023 13:04 - 1 hour - 125 MB

Stu Levitan’s guest is UW history professor Stephen Kantrowitz, whose new book should be of special interest to those of us here in Teejop. It’s Citizens of a Stolen Land: A Ho-Chunk History of the 19th Century United States from the good people at the University of North Carolina Press. If you are like most Americans with an immigrant background, you probably think citizenship is a good thing, because it confers rights and privileges. But for Native Americans in the 19th century, it was so...

The Life And Music Of Al Jarreau

November 16, 2023 20:27 - 53 minutes - 122 MB

Al Jarreau is one of the most beloved musical artists to come out of Milwaukee, and his music – from jazz to pop to R&B – defies easy classification. He performed with a bevy of jazz musicians, and blended an eclectic mix of other styles into his work. But Jarreau is perhaps best known for his live performances and expressive vocal improvisation. When he passed away in 2017, the New York Times wrote of Jarreau’s “virtuosic ability to produce an array of vocalizations ranging from delicious ...

Poet Tacey M. Atsitty on Risking Your Heart and Being Swallowed Up

November 06, 2023 18:00 - 51 minutes - 5 MB

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with Tacey M. Atsitty about her poetry collection (At) Wrist, (2023, The University of Wisconsin Press Press). In a fever dream of metaphor and image, Atsitty explores themes of loss, romantic love, and faith. Drawing on the familiar poetic form of the sonnet, Atsitty demonstrates how vulnerability, nakedness, and risk are an essential part of the connections we build with others across time. Delicate and visceral, (At) Wrist i...

UW Prof. Stephen Kantrowitz, "Citizens of a Stolen Land: A Ho-Chunk History of the 19th Century United States "

October 30, 2023 18:00 - 52 minutes - 5 MB

Stu Levitan welcomes UW history professor Stephen Kantrowitz, whose new book should be of special interest to those of us here in Teejop, it’s Citizens of a Stolen Land: A Ho-Chunk History of the 19th Century United States from the good people at the University of North Carolina Press. If you are like most Americans with an immigrant background, you probably think citizenship is a good thing, because it confers rights and privileges. But for Native Americans in the 19th century, it was some...

Alison Townsend On The Spirit Of Place

October 17, 2023 22:17 - 54 minutes - 5 MB

On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Cole Erickson interviews author Alison Townsend.  Alison is an award-winning author of two poetry collections, The Blue Dress & Persephone in America, and a volume of prose, The Persistence of Rivers. She is also a professor emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. She joined us in the studio to discuss her latest book of memoir-in-essays titled The Green Hour: A Natural History of Home, published by the University of Wisconsin ...

What Are You Reading?

October 09, 2023 18:00 - 53 minutes - 5 MB

On Madison Book Beat, we aim to highlight local authors and book events. And sometimes, we hope that you just might learn about the next book on your to-read pile. On this pledge drive edition of Madison Book Beat, we flip the table, asking YOU: what’re you reading? What book should we add to our reading list? David Ahrens hosts today’s open line. Books mentioned by callers and by hosts in this episode include… Elizabeth Engstrom’s When Darkness Loves Us (Valancourt Books, 1985), Works b...

A Musical Translation of Movement: Jérôme Camal on Guadeloupean Gwoka and (Post) Coloniality

October 02, 2023 17:00 - 598 MB

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with musician and scholar Jérôme Camal on his monography Creolized Aurality: Guadeloupean Gwoka and Postcolonial Politics (2019, University of Chicago Press). Jérôme Camal is assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and his research and teaching focus on music, dance, and postcoloniality across the French Atlantic world. Broadly speaking, he investigates how postcolonial ways of knowing and wa...

Joyce Carol Oates, "Zero-Sum"

September 25, 2023 18:00 - 52 minutes - 5 MB

Stu Levitan welcomes to Madison BookBeat one of our greatest living writers, perhaps the preeminent American writer, Joyce Carol Oates. She holds a master’s degree and an honorary doctorate from the University of Wisconsin, but of greater immediate interest is that she’s coming back to Madison for an appearance at the Wisconsin Book Festival this Thursday evening the 28th to talk about her new collection, Zero-Sum. That’s at 7 o’clock in the Madison Central Library. To call Joyce Carol Oat...

B. Pladek’s Magical Intersection Of Ecology And History

September 19, 2023 02:36 - 51 minutes - 5 MB

On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Cole Erickson interviews author Ben Pladek about his debut novel Dry Land. It is 1917, and a young forester in the north woods of Wisconsin has just discovered he has a magical gift: his touch can grow any plant in minutes. Through this thought-provoking novel, Pladek brings us on a eloquent journey that explores the possibility that such a magical gift could actually be a curse, testing and uprooting the character’s beliefs of nature, love, and self...

Jon Melrod's "Fighting Times" in Wisconsin

September 11, 2023 18:00 - 52 minutes - 5 MB

This week on Madison Book Beat, host David Ahrens speaks with Jonathan Melrod, a prominent radical, political activist, labor organizer, human rights lawyer and pancreatic cancer survivor, now out with a memoir: "Fighting Times: Organizing on the Front Lines of the Class War" (September 2022, PM Press). Melrod's memoir highlights his time as a student radical on the UW-Madison campus, during the peak of anti-war upheaval in the 1960s. But unlike the vast majority of protesters, after the de...

Novelist And Poet Quan Barry On Nonduality, Communicating Beyond Language, And Writing Across Genres

September 04, 2023 17:00 - 53 minutes - 5 MB

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with novelist, poet and playwright Quan Barry about her novel When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East (2022, Vintage) and her forthcoming collection of poetry Auction (2023, University of Pittsburgh Press). “Why do we need to believe our lives must add up to some grand narrative, and what happens when we stop believing this?” asks the narrator of When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East. Set in the vast steppes of Mongolia, the no...

Poet Deshawn McKinney On Vulnerability As A Muscle

August 21, 2023 17:00 - 52 minutes - 5 MB

On this edition of Madison BookBeat, host Cole Erickson interviews poet Deshawn McKinney. The Milwaukee poet is out with his debut chapbook father forgive me (Black Sunflowers Poetry Press, 2021). It’s a collection described as “an acerbic hip hop hymnal” filled with “fearless, wounding and tender” poems. About the guest:  Deshawn McKinney is a writer and poet out of Milwaukee and currently lives in Madison. His poetry has appeared in multiple journals, including River Heron Review as a po...

Scholar Nicole Fox On Memorials, Transitional Justice, And The Inescapability Of Memory

August 07, 2023 17:00 - 53 minutes - 5 MB

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with Nicole Fox about her monograph, After Genocide: Memory and Reconciliation in Rwanda (2021, The University of Wisconsin Press Press).   How does a society move forward after the mass violence of genocide? What role do public memorials play in creating healing narratives ? Whose experiences get told and re-told, and whose experiences get marginalized as years go by? 2024 marks thirty years since the 1994 genocide against th...

Michael Dorgan, "No Fight, No Blame: A Journalist's Life in Martial Arts" (part 2)

July 31, 2023 20:22 - 1 hour - 5 MB

Part two of Stu Levitan’s conversation with his friend and former newspaper colleague Michael Dorgan, about his new book No Fight, No Blame: A Journalist’s Life in Martial Arts. It is an absorbing read about a fascinating life which both general readers and martial arts aficionados will enjoy. And quite a life it has been in both those fields for Michael Dorgan, taking him from Richland Center Wisconsin to Beijing China as bureau chief for Knight-Ridder Newspapers and as a formal disciple t...

On (Short) Storytelling, with Wisconsin writer Steve Fox

July 17, 2023 18:00 - 48 minutes - 5 MB

The stories included in Steve Fox’s new collection “traverse a tapestry of tenderness, dissonance, indifference, dystopia, and charm.” They frequently feature Midwest settings, along with motifs centering trauma, loss, class, and politics.  The collection, titled Sometimes Creek, was published earlier this year by Cornerstone Press, and won the 2022 Zona Gale Award for Short Fiction from the Wisconsin Writers Awards. Incoming Madison Book Beat host Cole Erickson sits down with Steve Fox f...

The search for dignity in Palestine, with Christa Bruhn

July 10, 2023 18:00 - 53 minutes - 5 MB

The Palestinian city of Jenin, in the West Bank, is in international headlines after several were killed and dozens injured in an Israel raid. The city is a significant symbol of Palestinian resistance — and it figures heavily in Christa Bruhn's new memoir, Crossing Borders: The Search for Dignity in Palestine.  The memoir, ten years in the making and published this summer by Little Creek Press, follows Bruhn's journey of curiosity to Jerusalem and Gaza, first forged while studying abroad a...

Local Writer JK Cheema On Writing, Family, And Remembering The Past

July 03, 2023 17:00 - 53 minutes - 5 MB

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with JK Cheema on her new memoir, The Black Attache: Vignettes from a Life (2023, Calumet Editions). Born in 1942 to a Sikh family in Lahore, Cheema witnessed history in the making as the subcontinent of India was being divided into the separate countries of India and Pakistan. After moving to the United States to earn Master’s degrees in Social Work and Public Health and a PhD Social Sciences, Cheema joined the United States A...

Jon Shelton on "The Education Myth"

June 12, 2023 18:00 - 52 minutes - 5 MB

The US education system has been sold as the solution for individual success and economic security. Should that still be the model? Our guest, Jonathan Shelton, questions the idea that education should be the main way to access economic opportunity - especially when pitted against other social democratic alternatives. That's the starting point to his richly-researched new book, The Education Myth, published this spring by Cornell University Press. David Ahrens speaks with Jon Shelton about ...

Writer John West On Paradox, Redemption, And Playing Bach

June 05, 2023 17:00 - 53 minutes - 5 MB

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with John West about his genre-bending memoir, Lessons and Carols: A Meditation on Recovery (2023, Wm. B. Eerdman’s Publishing Co.). Lesson and Carols takes its shape from the Christian liturgical practice of the same name, often celebrated on Christmas eve. The service consists of nine short lessons that sketch the fall of humanity, the coming Messiah, the need for redemption, and hope found in the birth of Christ. Between eac...

Mark Borthwick, "A Brave and Lovely Woman: Mamah Borthwick and Frank Lloyd Wright"

May 29, 2023 18:00 - 1 hour - 5 MB

Stu Levitan welcomes Mark Borthwick, here to talk about his new biography of his second cousin thrice removed, A Brave and Lovely Woman: Mamah Borthwick and Frank Lloyd Wright, from the good people at the University of Wisconsin Press. Mamah Borthwick was a highly educated, charismatic young woman from Oak Park Illinois at the turn of the 20th century, soon to become the translator of the internationally renowned Swedish feminist Ellen Key. But as Mark Borthwick writes, she lived with a man...

Public Lies and Professional Secrets in Cold War Washington

May 22, 2023 16:22 - 51 minutes - 5 MB

How should reporters consider their ethical responsibilities to the public? That's a question studied through a historical lens in a new book by UW-Madison journalism professor Kathryn J. McGarr.  In City of Newsmen, McGarr explores how how the midcentury national press corps kept quiet about their skepticism in the first decades of the Cold War. National journalists, who were at the time almost exclusively white males, knew full well that they had reason to be cynical about the war and the...

Scholar Sami Schalk On Black Disability Politics from the Black Panthers to the 2020 Uprising

May 01, 2023 17:00 - 5 MB

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with Sami Schalk about her book, Black Disability Politics (2022, Duke University Press). Across six tightly-argued chapters and two praxis-focused interludes, Black Disability Politics explores how Black cultural workers have engaged disability as a social and political issue differently than the mainstream, white-dominated disability rights movement. In doing so, Schalk argues that because Black disability politics take on di...

Madison Infuses Scott Mitchel May’s New Novel, “Breakneck”

April 17, 2023 19:28 - 5 MB

In Scott Mitchel May’s latest novel, a serial killer who believes he’s possessed by an Irish demi-god haunts Madison while a city detective tracks his patterns for years. A former Capitol intern becomes a separationist working to retake the American Southwest. The US is led by a President who speaks gibberish except when on the air, and a Wisconsin state senator who is past his prime casts a deciding vote to secede from the nation amid growing continental conflict. Plots collide and timelin...

Writer Jeff Sharlet On Whiteness, Slow Civil War, And Harry Belafonte

April 03, 2023 17:00 - 5 MB

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with Jeff Sharlet about his new collection of essays, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War (2023, W.W. Norton). The Undertow is an incisive and at times foreboding collection. It is made up of ten interrelated essays that map the social, cultural and religious geographies of the contemporary United States. The collection takes the killing of Ashli Babbitt as its through line. Babbit was the pro-Trump insurrectionist shot ...

Freedom Dreaming with Anisa Yudawanti and Amy Wilson

March 27, 2023 17:00 - 54 minutes - 125 MB

Jonas Gomez Tijerino welcomes Anisa Yudawanti and Amy Wilson to discuss "What Does it Mean to Tell the Truth", written by Ms. Yudawanti’s 9th grade History students and illustrated by Ms. Wilson’s 2nd and 3rd grade Art students. This is a project which collects the musings of Madison high school students regarding the manner by which history is recounted. Whose stories are centered? Whose are left out? Whose responsibility is it to ensure that we as educators of our future leaders are tellin...

Nick Vander Puy On The HELP Campaign To Save The Penokees

March 20, 2023 17:00 - 50 minutes - 116 MB

Madison Book Beat host Gil Halsted sits down in the studio with Nick Vander Puy, journalist and author of the recent book “Water Protectors: The H.E.L.P Campaign to Save the Penokees” (Strong Dog Press, July 2022). It’s a book that details the Harvest Educational Learning Project, or H.E.L.P. campaign, a coalition of tribal citizens, environmentalists and neighbors who occupied treaty-protected lands in the Penokee Hills, in Ashland and Iron Counties of Wisconsin’s Northwoods. The Penokees,...

Poet Jameka Williams On Sex, Race, And Kim Kardashian

March 06, 2023 18:00 - 52 minutes - 72.7 MB

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with Jameka Williams about her Brittingham Prize-winning debut poetry collection, American Sex Tape™ (2022, The University of Wisconsin Press). Brittingham Prize judge and poet Brian Teare describes American Sex Tape™ as a collection “[s]plit between a love of watching and the fear created by it.” “Williams demolishes misogynist, racist logic with weaponized line breaks and wrecking-ball wit. Looking directly “into the camera,”...

Frank Emspak, "Troublemaker: Saying No to Power," part 2

March 06, 2023 15:27 - 53 minutes - 72.9 MB

Stu Levitan welcomes WORT’S own Frank Emspak for a special pledge drive conversation about his new memoir Troublemaker: Saying No to Power. You may know Frank most recently as Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin School for Workers, and the co-founder and co-producer of Madison Labor News and the Workers Independent News Services. Those of you of a certain age may recall his service in the sixties and early seventies as chair of the UW Socialist Club then chair of the National...

Rebecca Webster On Sovereignty & Threats To The Oneida Nation

February 20, 2023 23:00 - 49 minutes - 5 MB

For more than a dozen years, Rebecca Webster served as an attorney for the Oneida Nation, at a time when the nation was defending itself against threats to its land and sovereignty. Her experience working on those lawsuits, combined with a history of the Oneida over centuries and cultural teachings from the Nation, along with the changing policy on tribal land rights is the subject of her new book, In Defense of Sovereignty: Protecting the Oneida Nation’s Inherent Right to Self Determinatio...

Author Kathryn Harlan On The Sensual And Unsettling In Storytelling

February 06, 2023 18:00 - 52 minutes - 121 MB

In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with Kathryn Harlan about her book of short stories, Fruiting Bodies (2022, W.W. Norton & Co.). Across Fruiting Bodies’ eight stories, Harlan deftly blends the fantastic, weird, and macabre with the sensual, tender, and mundane as we follow a cast of characters–mostly queer and mostly young women–as they navigate ever-changing bodies, ever-changing relationships with friends, lovers, and family, and a world rapidly changing du...

Brian J. Kramp, "This Band Has No Past: How Cheap Trick Became Cheap Trick"

January 30, 2023 19:00 - 1 hour - 97.4 MB

Stu Levitan welcomes Brian J Kramp, author of a book about a world-famous band that is technically from Rockford IL, but which owes a lot of its success to Madison. That band of course is Cheap Trick, the book is This Band Has No Past: How Cheap Trick Became Cheap Trick, from the good people at Jawbone Press. The book’s title notwithstanding, the band does indeed have a past, and a very interesting one at that. First, there was the Byzantine way in which the bands Grim Reapers, Toastin Jam,...

100 Umbrellas by Ron Czerwien

January 23, 2023 18:00 - 52 minutes - 121 MB

Angie Trudell Vasquez interviews Ron Czerwien on his new collection of poetry, 100 Umbrellas, published by Bent Paddle Press.

Joel Selvin, "Sly And The Family Stone: An Oral History"

January 09, 2023 19:00 - 58 minutes - 79.7 MB

Stu Levitan welcomes back to the show the award-winning journalist, music critic and author Joel Selvin for a conversation about his classic book Sly and the Family Stone: An Oral History, out of print for many years but just reissued by the good people at Permuted Press. It is the story of the rise and fall of one of the most important figures in modern music, from his childhood as a musical prodigy to the end of the band in 1975. It’s a tale told well by the people who were there – his par...

Michael Massey, "More: A Memoir"

January 02, 2023 21:20 - 1 hour - 91.4 MB

Stu Levitan welcomes Madison native Michael Massey, the award-winning composer, songwriter, pianist and performer whose musical resume include co-founding the bands Chaser and Boys in White, writing the score to the Madison Ballet production Dracula: A Rock Ballet, being a featured performer in the Mad Cabaret, Furious Bongos and Piano Fondue, releasing several solo albums including Be Careful How you Say Pianist, the Present and Attack of the Delicious, and perhaps his greatest musical acc...

Dennis Punzel, "Point Wisconsin! The Road to a National Title for Kelly Sheffield & The Wisconsin Badgers."

December 26, 2022 19:00 - 1 hour - 135 MB

Stu Levitan welcomes veteran sportswriter and Madison native Dennis Punzel for a conversation about his new book about the Wisconsin Volleyball team, Point Wisconsin! The Road to a National Title for Kelly Sheffield & The Wisconsin Badgers. It’s a book he was largely able to research while at his day job, covering the Badger team for the Wisconsin State Journal  since 2013, part of his 37 year career with the State Journal and the Capital Times, following seven years with papers in Green Bay...

Waterbaby By Nikki Wallschlaeger

December 19, 2022 19:09 - 52 minutes - 120 MB

Madison BookBeat host Angie Trudell Vasquez interviews Nikki Wallschlaeger on Waterbaby, her third collection of poetry. Poems read include poems on Black motherhood, ending capitalism, the historic lunch counters of the United States, and how Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee brings poets together and shapes us.

Helen Shiller, "Daring To Struggle, Daring To Win: Five Decades of Resistance in Chicago's Uptown Community" (part 2)

December 13, 2022 02:29 - 52 minutes - 72.5 MB

Part two of Stu Levitan’s conversation with one of the most interesting and politically important UW graduates from the late sixties, Helen Shiller. Her career encompassed almost 30 years of civic activism and community organizing with the Black Panther Party, the Students for a Democratic Society, the Intercommunal Survival Committee, and 24 years as a member of the Chicago City Council. Studs Terkel included some oral history from Helen as a chapter in his book Hope Dies Last, and now she’...

Helen Shiller, "Daring To Struggle, Daring To Win: Five Decades of Resistance in Chicago's Uptown Community"

November 28, 2022 19:00 - 1 hour - 124 MB

Stu Levitan welcomes one of the most interesting and politically important UW graduates from the late sixties, Helen Shiller, whose career encompassed almost 30 years of civic activism and community organizing with the Black Panther Party, the Students for a Democratic Society, the Intercommunal Survival Committee, and 24 years as a member of the Chicago City Council. nteresting and important, enough so for the legendary Studs Terkel to include Helen’s oral history as a chapter in his book Ho...

Madison Book Beat: Tegan Nia Swanson on "Things We Found When The Water Went Down"

November 21, 2022 19:00 - 52 minutes - 121 MB

This week, host Angie Trudell Vasquez speaks with local writer Tegan Nia Swanson about her debut novel, Things We Found When the Water Went Down (December 2022, Catapult Co). Described as a dark and ethereal eco-noir infused with magical realism, Things We Found When the Water Went Down examines power, identity, and myth in a story of murder and disappearance. You can find out more about the author here.

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