Fall for the Book Podcast

Natalia Theodoridou discusses his fever dream of a Bluebeard retelling - about the choice and non-choice of those stuck in cycles of abuse, the power of fairytales, and the toxicity of the patriarchy. He also examines choice and character arcs in interactive fiction, and how his landscape has informed his writing.

In the final episode of the season, Bernardine (Dine) Watson sits down to discuss her journey with kidney disease and her two transplants. A nonfiction writer and poet, Watson talks about healthcare disparities, finding community, and accepting her diagnosis of FSGS in this conversation about Transplant: A Memoir, which won the inaugural Washington Writers' Publishing House Creative Nonfiction Award.

Comedian Sally Chaffin Brooks talks about her through hike on the Appalachian Trail. From the funky trail names, to the memorable characters along the way, to the lessons the AT served up for her career in comedy, Chaffin Brooks shares the funny, difficult, and thoughtful stories from her life-changing hike.

Jen Soriano, author of Nervous: Essays on Heritage and Healing talks about chronic pain, ancestral trauma, and finding joy and support through community. Soriano is a Filipinx-American writer, independent scholar, and performer who has long worked at the intersection of grassroots organizing, narrative strategy, and art-driven social change.

Jennifer Brice talks about Another North, her essay collection about growing up in Fairbanks, Alaska and moving through the world, understanding herself as a woman, mother, daughter and granddaughter. In the essays, she looks for answers in family lore, personal experience, and conversations with friends, and beloved books in this wide-ranging and poignant collection.

Greg Wrenn discusses his book Mothership: A Memoir of Wonder and Crisis, a story of personal and global healing. He touches on the importance of coral reefs to the journey to heal from complex PTSD through the administration of a psychedelic tea called ayahuasca, and so much more in this book that blends memoir with cutting-edge science.

Edwin B. Henderson II discusses his book, The Grandfather of Black Basketball, about his grandfather and namesake, Dr. E. B. Henderson. A local Civil Rights leader, athletics game changer, and prolific writer, E. B.'s legacy is both a local and national story.

Praveen Herat joins Fall for the Book to talk about his debut novel, Between This World and the Next, a gripping exploration of power, identity, and how far one must go to uncover the truth. Herat was born in London to Sri Lankan parents and educated at Oxford and the University of East Anglia. He lived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for several years, a period that marked him profoundly and prompted his research for what would become Between This World and the Next.

Shirley M. Marshall talks about the suffragist movement and the 19th Amendment in this episode of the Fall for the Book Podcast. Her book, A Radical Suffragist in Washington, D.C.: An Inside Story of the National Woman’s Party is local, national, and international look at the strategy and politics of the suffragist movement.

Mythology, identity, motherhood, and more discussed in this episode of the Fall for the Book Podcast with poet K. Avvirin Berlin, author of the collection Leda's Daughters. the collection is full of salt-of-the-earth poems that traverse and transgress the temporal, re-envisioning African American and Native American women’s history as a history of poetics.