A Novel Idea

Over the years it seems that many of the authors we’ve featured have been published by Berkeley based She Writes Press, including our featured authors on this episode. Peri Chickering joins me this week with her book based on the Indigenous concept of the Seven Directions, Leadership Flow: the Unstoppable Power of Connection. Plus, I chat with Carolyn Lee Arnold with her sex positive book, Fifty First Dates After Fifty, A Memoir. To set the stage, we’ll talk with Brooke Warner, Publisher of She Writes Press. It’s KRCB’s A Novel Idea with Suzanne M. Lang.

Nonfiction that reads like a novel, and a novel steeped in modern California history are approached by Suzanne M Lang in conversation with Joanna FitzPatrick and Jeanne Baker Guy.

FitzPatrick’s novel, The Artist Colony is a murder mystery set at a women’s art colony in the dynamic environment of 1924 Carmel-by-the Sea. Though a work of fiction, it vividly paints the weather and landscape of the area, that has so inspired artists, and is set in the early Twentieth Century, when women, who just got the vote, were struggling to be taken seriously as artists.

Jeanne Baker Guy has produced a memoir of a time in her life when her ex-husband kidnapped their two children; the story of her struggle to locate them and bring them home is the story of You’ll Never Find Us. Both books are published by She Writes Press.

Author Kent Wong's memoir, Swimming to Freedom -My Escape from China and the Cultural Revolution, an Untold Story is a riveting tale of his life in China as a boy during the Cultural Revolution. Wong joined the dissident underground and became one of the half million other Chinese who braved the waters of the South China Sea, escaping to Hong Kong, then under British rule. Join Suzanne Lang in conversation with Kent Wong.

A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB 104.9 / streaming @ krcb.org /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!

Fiction can be fantasy, fiction can reflect back to us who we are, and at its best it does both while being an entertaining read. Such is the case with two books we feature and the conversations with their award-winning authors Jessica Barksdale Inclán brings us the time-traveling literary fantasy, The Play’s the Thing. Nancy Econome brings us her debut novel of Greek immigrants in the 1940’s, The Classic Grill, a Tale of Greek Gods and Immigrant Heroes. Join Suzanne M. Lang in conversation with these two novelists. A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB 104.9 – Sonoma County’s NPR station / streaming @ krcb.org/radio /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!

Scampering across balconies, rooftops, and even Mick Jaggers house, to string antenna wire across London, Arnold M.D. Levine details the antics and achievements of the pirate radio movement in the UK in his fun and informative memoir Banned by the BBC, How I Became a Radio Pirate, a memoir of 1970's London. Levine is a Sonoma County radio broadcaster and host of Tommy's Holiday Camp on KOWS-Occidental and joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation.

A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB 104.9 – Sonoma County’s NPR station / streaming @ krcb.org/radio /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!

“I believe in Rock-and-Roll, books, and movies to upset the world” says Jonathan Taplin author of The Magic Years, Scenes from a Rock-and-Roll Life. Taplin has been riding the waves of American art and culture for 50 years, from road manager for Dylan and the Band, to producing movies for Martin Scorsese and Wim Wenders, working in high finance, creating the first video-on-demand service in the 90’s, and heading up the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at USC. He’s got some great stories that he tells with wit, candor, and humility. Jonathan Taplin joins Suzanne Lang in conversation.

A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB 104.9 – Sonoma County’s NPR station / streaming @ krcb.org/radio /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!

Sometimes we move through life and are blindsided by catastrophe, and each individual’s response is unique and their own. No roadmaps, but there are touchstones along the way.

Suzanne Lang talks with two authors who recount their journeys of shock and loss with candor, humor, and compassion.

Cheryl Krauter’s husband died one night within the span of 5 minutes, leaving her stunned. Odyssey of Ashes, A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Letting Go is her story of moving with and through significant loss.

Rachel Michelberg’s candid and gripping memoir, Crash, How I became a Reluctant Caregiver is her story of her husband suffering a traumatic brain injury in a plane crash, and the difficult decisions she made with regard to his care and her family life.

The year is 1597. The setting is the Upper Arctic. In search of a northeast passage to the Orient, Dutch cartographer William Barents and his crew become locked in ice and must wait out the months of polar night if they want to return to civilization. Suzanne Lang is in conversation with journalist and adventurer Andrea Pitzer on her account of this outrageous and harrowing journey in her book ICEBOUND, Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World. Pitzer’s previous work includes One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, and The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov. Join us Sunday, May 30th at 10am PT.

A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB-FM Radio 91 / streaming @ norcalpublicmedia.org /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!

(Photos courtesy of the author)

Suzanne Lang is on the road and her guest, journalist Brad Herzog, brings us his own travelogue in Detour 2020, a Cross-country Drive through America’s Wrong Turns —his deep dive into the year of COVID, social unrest and racial division, and the presidential election that seemed to represent a turning point for the American ethos.

A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB-FM Radio 91 / streaming @ norcalpublicmedia.org /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!

(Photos: Courtesy of the author)

Award-winning author L. Annette Binder has created a moving and intimate portrait of an ordinary German family affected by war in the waning days of WWII, with characters that will break your heart and stay with you long beyond finishing the book. This is a universal story of the human cost of war. Binder joins Suzanne M. Lang in conversation on A Novel Idea.

A Novel Idea airs on the first and fifth Sundays of every month at 10:00 am on KRCB-FM Radio 91 / streaming @ norcalpublicmedia.org /Download the FREE KRCB mobile app @ iTunes & Google Play!

(Photos: Courtesy of the author)