AWM Author Talks

This week, to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, acclaimed Irish-American writers Alice McDermott, Joseph O’Neill and Irish Ambassador to the United States Daniel Mulhall discuss their work, their approach to writing, and their shared Irish heritage. This program originally took place October 29th, 2020 and was recorded live over Zoom.

Hear more immigrant and refugee writers share their stories in our virtual exhibit My America: Immigrant and Refugee Writers Today. Explore virtually at My-America.org.

We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Find more podcasts and episodes here.

This week, AWM President Carey Cranston chats with award-winning New York Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth about her new book This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race. This conversation was recorded live via Zoom on February 26th, 2021.

We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.

This week, renowned mystery writer Sara Paretsky discusses her book Shell Game, her writing process and more. This conversation was recorded live at the American Writers Museum in October 2018.

We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.

This week, NPR correspondent Aarti Shahani discusses her memoir Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares with fellow NPR correspondent Sonari Rhodes Glinton. This conversation was recorded live at the American Writers Museum in October 2019.

This program was the first in a series of programs presented in conjunction with our special exhibit My America: Immigrant and Refugee Writers Today, which you can explore virtually at My-America.org

We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer. Discover more podcasts and episodes here.

“The book is literally my heart on a page.”

“And so relative to what my mother had seen before in the many countries she lived in as a lifelong migrant, she saw in America people can actually talk to each other without pulling machetes and women can have a voice.”

"You can recount facts but I think the truth of it is the significance...so the tools of journalism are there, but the blessing of being a writer is you get to delve into the deeper truth.”

“Journalism was my escape from being an immigrant daughter. A lot of us escape what we come from, in subtle ways and dramatic ways.”

“We all have inside of us, something that glows. And sometimes you pay attention to it and you lift it up and you shine it and you cultivate it and you find out what to do with it. And sometimes you ignore it because often it’s out of fear.”

This week, Harvard scholar Dr. John Stauffer discusses the legacy of Frederick Douglass, particularly his use of early photography. This lecture was recorded live at the American Writers Museum in March 2019.

Quick programming note: Dr. Stauffer used photographs to go along with his presentation. If you would like to see those, you can watch this program in its entirety here on YouTube. They are also available in Dr. Stauffer's book Picturing Frederick Douglass and, additionally, some photos are available in our virtual Frederick Douglass: Agitator exhibit. Explore at FD-Agitator.org.

We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.

This week, Jasmine Guillory discusses her romance novel The Wedding Party with writer and poet Diamond Sharp. This conversation was recorded live at the American Writers Museum in July 2019.

Quick programming note: this discussion contains explicit language and references to sex, it is a romance novel after all...Listener discretion is advised.

We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.

This week, we sit down with Walter Mosley and discuss his work and the craft of writing. This program took place October 24th, 2018 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. At the time, Mosley’s novel John Woman had just been published. Mosley’s latest Easy Rawlins mystery comes out tomorrow, February 2nd!

Quick programming note: this discussion contains explicit language and references to sex, drugs and alcohol. Listener discretion is advised.

We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.

“If you say your history is something that has nothing to do with the people who actually built your f***ing country, then what happens is that you strangle your own potential to know your history. And so the truth is gone. Which is what we feel in America today. Nobody even believes in truth anymore because they’ve been strangled.”

“Any real historian will tell you the best way to understand history is by a shopping list.”

“If you’re not self-trained, you’ve been brainwashed...If you go to school, school is there to brainwash you. You might make more money, you might do better, but you won’t know the truth. And you won’t know that you don’t know the truth.”

“I love Herman Melville, he was an autodidact. You know, he was reading Shakespeare while he was writing Moby-Dick and you can really follow it right through.”

“You gotta admit it...it’s the sociopath who makes it, especially in the system of capitalism because capitalism supports sociopathy. The more you’re willing to kill old people and widows out of apartment buildings the more money you’re gonna make.”

This week, iconic young adult author Gary Paulsen discusses his new middle grade memoir Gone to the Woods, his own survival story. He is joined by children’s book author and librarian Betsy Bird. This program took place January 12th, 2021 and was recorded live via Zoom.

We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.

“I’m just gonna write until I die. Probably about Thursday at 4 o’clock! I’m hoping for a little longer than that, but we’ll see. But yeah, I’m gonna write more.”

“I would remember things that were just horrific, things that I would not want to see now even as an adult. But I was astonished that I got through them. I really was.”

“I think the original story was somebody around the fire showing what the hunt was like. They told the story of that. Later that became words. Later it became writing. Later it became art. But the story is the same. The story is sacrosanct.”

“The reason [my memoir] is third person...I thought by getting detached a little bit I could have more clarity. And it worked.”

“The library became a sanctuary...I’d go in there to get warm and get away from the bullies. But one day the librarian gave me a book, and then another book, and then a book a week, then two books a week. And then she’d throw in a Dickens, or a Melville. I would be in prison or dead without that librarian.”

For our first episode of 2021, we chat with renowned writer Jacqueline Woodson. She is the author of dozens of award-winning books for young adults, middle graders, and children; among her many accolades, she is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a four-time National Book Award finalist, and a two-time Coretta Scott King Award winner. This conversation took place September 7th, 2018 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. At that time, Woodson was the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. She is joined by AWM Program Committee member Sheila Murphy.

We hope you enjoy entering the mind of a writer.

“I think young people are really smart and sometimes we don’t understand how grounded and connected to the world and everything around it they are.”

“I read slower than other people as a young person and so I read differently...Even today it feels like people get challenged for reading slowly, which I completely disagree with. I think people should read slowly because it takes us a long time to write these books.”

“Always remember, when you are with your people, you are home.”

“I’m interested in any way that people read. And I think graphic novels are amazing. I remember the resistance against them, right? Like, that’s not really reading. Those aren’t really books...but I’m so excited that going from that time when there was resistance in classrooms and libraries to people recognizing that some people read this way.”

“I go around the country and spread the gospel of reading and literature and the importance of gathering and having conversations that are deep and sometimes hard and sometimes scary but that books help us to have. So my platform is Reading = Hope x Change.”

This week, AWM Program Director Allison Sansone chats with award-winning NBC News correspondent Jacob Soboroff. This conversation took place September 3rd, 2020 and was recorded live via Zoom.

This is our final Author Talks episode of the year. We are taking a couple weeks now to rest but we will return in January with more fun, engaging, and inspiring conversations with contemporary writers. Have a great rest of the year and an even happier new year.

Now go, be inspired, and find the Mind of a Writer in yourself! Discover new podcasts and episodes here.

“The reason [Juan and José] let me tell their story was because he had the same questions I did. How did this happen and how can we prevent it from ever happening again?"

"And when I say ‘it’ I want to be specific. American Academy of Pediatrics called this government-sanctioned child abuse. Physicians for Human Rights called this torture, what the American government did.”

“I set out to write this book to answer questions that I couldn’t answer for myself.”

“I always took this assignment as one of literally thousands of versions of this story that I think ultimately should be told. Every person who was separated has a story. All the officials involved in this policy have a story.”

“There were career officials who almost at every opportunity tried to stop this from happening. It was the Trump administration officials who kept pushing back and kept pushing forward.”