A Novel Idea

This months show highlights New Voices on the Vine: A Ten Minute Play Festival, a collaboration between the Redwood Writers and 6th Street Playhouse. Linda Loveland Reid, Festival Director Lennie Dean, playwrights Maureen Studer, Malena Eljumaily, and KRCB’s own Gil Mansergh are all featured this month.

Also to help kick off KRCB’s Summer Concerts in the Garden at Chroma Gallery - coming up Saturday May 16th, Teresa Tudury’s music is featured in the show.

John C. Hampsey’s boyhood memoir, Kaufman’s Hill standsout as a personal reflection that reads like a good novel.The story is set in the mid-sixties during that marked transition in urban landscapes and in race and culture. John’s voice is unique and compelling and he joins Suzanne Lang in conversation. John’s engaged in a book tour around the country; find out more at www.johnchampsey.com.

Also featured is Michael Nagler, long-time peace and non-violence educator and activist. Michael is the author of The Search for a Nonviolent Future. Discover more at www.michaelnagler.net.

On this edition of A Novel Idea, host Suzanne Lang talks with Peter Richardson, author of A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America; and American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams; he is the book review editor at the National Memo, and teaches American Culture at San Francisco State University. 2015 marks the 50th anniversary of the project known as the Grateful Dead. No Simple Highway - A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead is Peter Richardson's colorful story of the band, the times, the community and the music of the Grateful Dead.

http://peterrichardson.blogspot.com

The tales told in Karen E. Bender's Refund, a collection of stories that centers on money and family, are exquisitely composed portraits of modern life, and chances are you will encounter characters that remind you a little or a lot of yourself. That's the brilliance of Bender's storytelling.” Karen E. Bender joins Suzanne Lang in conversation on A Novel Idea. Also featured is Dan Coshnear, critically acclaimed author of Occupy & Other Love Stories.

This month, A Novel Idea features two icons of contemporary culture; Jonah Raskin with his latest work A Terrible Beauty, the Wilderness and American Literature, his meditation on nature, wilderness, the American identity, and our heritage in American literature. Joel Selvin brings the richly patterned story of the darker side of the music industry through the prism of music producer, Bert Berns in his biography Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues.

Elizabeth Rosner joins Suzanne Lang in conversation on her latest novel Electric City. Just out from Counterpoint Press, Electric City is the coming-of-age love story set against the historical backdrop of a company town in upstate New York that once called itself “the city that lights the world.” Featuring Charles Proteus Steinmetz, the protégé of Edison who electrified the early 20th century, and a love triangle among the children of Electric City in the late 1960s, the novel interweaves past and present to explore the way inventions transform cities, heart and lives.

Suzanne also talks with Jessica Barksdale Inclán on her thirteenth novel How to Bake a Man from Ghostwood Books. Part love story, part journey of personal discovery, this humorous bit of Chic Lit boasts a colorful cast of characters who support Becca Muchmore as she bakes her way to finding herself. Recipes included.

Bich Min Nguyen joins us with her latest novel, Pioneer Girl, which contains a literary mystery involving Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose, but at its heart is a story of identity and belonging for a young Vietnamese woman trying to break free from her immigrant roots.

Like Bich Minh Nguyen, Lanette Hunter’s admiration for Laura Ingalls Wilder began in childhood and that has grown into her developing the role and portraying Laura Ingalls Wilder whenever and where ever she can. Hunter talks about the Wilders and Nguyen’s book.

Two novelists whose recent works are memoirs. Two women who have traveled some rough terrain in their lives. Two people who express the rawness of grief and the wonder of love for their dogs. Suzanne Lang in conversation with Linda Gray Sexton on Bespotted, My Family’s Love Affair with Thirty-eight Dalmations, and with Jane Vandenburgh on The Wrong Dog Dream, A True Romance.

Renee Swindle's first novel Please Please Please was published internationally and an Essence Magazine/Blackboard best seller; her second novel, Shake Down the Stars, was hard and funny and a compelling read. Swindle's books have an energy that carries the reader through love, loss, bad behavior, and sweet rewards. Her latest book, set in Oakland, is A Pinch of Ooh La La and Renee talks with Suzanne Lang about her books and life as a writer.

Gerald Haslam has been writing about California and Californians for most of his life. His fiction includes Manuel and the Madman, Straight White Male, and Grace Period, among others; his non-fiction includes The Language of the Oil Fields, Workin' Man Blues, and In Thought and Action: the Enigmatic Life of H.I. Hayakawa. His latest work is the tragic story of an athlete dying young, Leon Patterson: A California Story. He and co-author Janice Haslam join Rosemary Manchester in conversation.

In the Freedom Summer of 1964, three young men, James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner went to Neshoba County Mississippi to register black voters. They went missing and were discovered 44 long days later buried in an earthen dam. August 4, 1964. Fifty years after these horrific events, which further spurred the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, we look at Carolyn Goodman –Andy Goodman’s mother, who was a social activist well before the murder of her son and continued living her life as an activist until her death at age 91.

Her memoir, My Mantelpiece: A Memoir of Survival and Social Justice, is a collaboration with author Brad Herzog and he joins Rosemary Manchester in conversation on those difficult times and this remarkable woman: Carolyn Goodman.

http://www.bradherzog.com/