Madison BookBeat

Stu Levitan welcomes Madison native Anne Winkler-Morey for a conversation about her book Allegiance to Winds and Waters: Bicycling the Political Divides of the United States, the narrative of the 12,000-mile bicycle trip she and her husband David took around the perimeter of the United States over 14 months in 2011-2012. It was quite an experience, and the book is as interesting as the endeavor.

Today, host Angie Trudell Vasquez speaks to Oscar Hokeah on his debut novel, Calling For A Blanket Dance (https://www.workman.com/products/calling-for-a-blanket-dance/hardback) (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2022). Angie and Oscar share stories about going to the Institute of American Indian Arts (https://iaia.edu/), how his book came to be, and examine the role families can play in healing.About the GuestOscar Hokeah is a citizen of Cherokee Nation and the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma from his mother’s side and has Mexican heritage through his father. He holds an MA in English with a concentration in Native American Literature from the University of Oklahoma, as well as a BFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), with a minor in Indigenous Liberal Studies. He is a recipient of the Truman Capote Scholarship Award through IAIA and is also a winner of the Native Writer Award through the Taos Summer Writers Conference. His short stories have been published in South Dakota Review, American Short Fiction, Yellow Medicine Review, Surreal South, and Red Ink Magazine. You can find more about him on his website, oscarhokeah.com (https://oscarhokeah.com/).

Stu Levitan welcomes back to the show Rob Zaleski for another conversation about conversations – the 19 interviews he had with former Madison Police Chief David Couper, just published as David Couper Beyond the Badge: Reflections of an Ex-Cop.In a city which has had many interesting and controversial police chiefs, David Couper stands out. He took command Jan. 2 1973 and ushered in a series of policy and personnel reforms that many residents applauded but many officers resisted – all while was suffering a battery of personal trials and tribulations, which would continue for decades. Then in 1993 he did something no one expected – he retired from the police department to become an Episcopal priest.Getting beyond the Couper headlines and into Couper’s head is the business which occupies Rob Zaleski in Beyond the Badge. It’s business he is well-equipped to pursue, having interviewed thousands of people, including David Couper, in his 40 years in journalism, including 26 years with The Capital Times. Rob was born and raised in working-class neighborhood Bay View, on Milwaukee’s south side. He studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee but de-matriculated in his junior year to become assistant sports editor of the Waukesha Freeman. He worked at the Milwaukee Journal and several small dailies in the early 1970s before joining United Press International’s Madison bureau ion 1976, where he was a night editor and covered the Green Bay Packers and University of Wisconsin sports.He was named sports editor of The Capital Times in 1981, later took a job with the LA Times, but couldn’t take the traffic, and in 1985 returned to the Cap Times as a columnist, racking up more than a dozen writing awards over the next 23 years.Beyond the Badge is Rob’s second q and a book with an interesting and accomplished public man, following 2019’s Ed Garvey Unvarnished: Lessons from a Visionary Progressive. That book was the focus of his first appearance on Madison BookBeat, on May 4, 2020, and kinda had something to do with this book getting written. His first book was a novel in 2012, Searching for Sal” which featured a character clearly based on Couper.

Hello again friends and and welcome to Madison BookBeat, your listener-supported community radio home for Madison authors, topics, book events and publishers. I’m your fourth week host Stu Levitan, and I am very excited about today’s show, because our guest is not only a Madison author, he is, by the objective criteria of sales and critical acclaim, Madison’s greatest author, David Maraniss, whose brand new book is about America’s greatest athlete. It’s called Path Lit By Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe, published last week by our good friends at Simon and Schuster, and already number2 on the NYT best seller list. As you probably know, David is a two-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for his work with the Washington Post, where he remains an associate editor, and the author of 12 previous books, including biographies of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Vince Lombardi, Roberto Clemente and a history that was in part about Madison and the UW in October 1967, They Marched into Sunlight. His Madison credentials are top notch. He wasn’t born here, but did grow up here as the son of Mary Maraniss, an editor with the UW Press, and my former boss at the Capital Times, Elliot Maraniss, who was the subject of his most recent book A Good American Family. And he and his wife Linda have a house on the near west side of Madison where they summer whenever they can. I usually spend a couple of minutes setting up the book, but you already know who Jim Thorpe was and  there is so much to talk about in these 626 pages of text and notes that I’ll just say I’ve had the pleasure of talking with David about his last seven books, and it is a real delight to welcome him now to MBB to talk about Path Lit By Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe

In this edition of Madison Bookbeat, host Angie Trudell Vasquez speaks with poet Matthew Gutierrez. He's the author of Notes I Wrote Along the Way (Ten16 Press, 2020), a collection of original poetry in English and Spanish.About the guest: Matthew James Gutierrez received his master's degree in educational psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. As an undergraduate, he studied creative writing, focusing on fiction writing and poetry. Other experiences include screenplay and television writing courses at UCLA. You can follow Matthew on Instagram: @matthewjames_g (https://www.instagram.com/matthewjames_g/?hl=en) and @notes2poetry (https://www.instagram.com/notes2poetry/?hl=en).

Wisconsin author Patricia Skalka is out this summer with Death Casts a Shadow (July 2022, UW Press). It's her seventh book in the Dave Cubiak mystery series, which pits a former Chicago cop against a roster of killers, all in beautiful Door County.In fact, the series was sparked by the beauty of Door County itself, says Skalka. She joins host David Ahrens to talk about the importance of place as a character in storytelling in this edition of Madison Bookbeat.About the guest: Patricia Skalka is the author of the award-winning Dave Cubiak Door County Mysteries. She turned to fiction after a career in nonfiction as a staff writer, freelancer, ghost writer, writing instructor, and book reviewer. She lives in Milwaukee and Door County. You can find more about her at patriciaskalka.com (http://www.patriciaskalka.com/).

Stu Levitan welcomes Madison native Doug Moe for a conversation about his new biography of the UW’s first director of women’s athletics, Kit Saunders-Nordeen. On June 23rd 1972, President Richard Nixon did two things with historical significance. In a meeting with chief of staff H. R. Haldeman, he told Haldeman to call FBI director Pat Gray and tell him to stay the hell away from Watergate because it was a CIA matter, which of course it was not. This was the so-called ‘smoking gun’ tape which quickly led to Nixon’s resignation when it was released a little over two years later.And, with a more appropriate nod to his re-election campaign, Nixon also signed the Education Amendment Act of 1972 with its 37 words and four commas now known as Title IX – “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”The impact of Title IX on women’s athletics at the University of Wisconsin – and the critical role that Katherine Kit Saunders played in defining that impact -- is the business that occupies Doug Moe in his latest biography, “The Right Thing To Do – Kit Saunders-Nordeen and the rise of Women’s Intercollegiate Athletics at the University of Wisconsin and Beyond.”It is a book the native Madisonian and 1979 graduate of the UW is well-equipped to write. Doug Moe is, after all, one of Madison’s most prolific and honored journalists and authors. He’s written 12 books, including Tommy Thompson’s autobiography, biographies of legendary Chicago newspaperman Mike Royko, Madison builder Marshall Erdmann and Madison jewelers and philanthropists Irwin and Robert Goodman, a history of the fabled but now defunct UW boxing program and more. In his 18 years as a daily columnist with the Capital Times and Wisconsin State Journal, he wrote more than 4,000 columns, which is about 3 million words, and continues to write a monthly column for Madison Magazine and a weekly blog for its website. He is so active, in fact, that his website isn’t doug moe dot com, it’s doug moe dot org. Speaking personally, in my work as a historian of Madison, I know I have benefitted greatly from several of his books, and am very much looking forward to one he’s working on now – the autobiography of State Senator Fred Risser. It is a great pleasure to welcome to MBB the great biographer of modern Madison, my friend Doug Moe.

This week on Madison Book Beat, host Rusty Russell speaks with poet Marilyn Taylor.Marilyn Taylor is a former Poet Laureate of Wisconsin, and of the city of Milwaukee. Her poems have appeared in many anthologies and journals, and she’s published eight collections of poetry, the latest of which is Outside the Frame (Kelsay Books, December 2021).Taylor taught poetry and writing at UW-Milwaukee for 15 years. She was the Poet Laureate of the state of Wisconsin from 2009-2010, and of the city of Milwaukee from 2004-2005. She lived in Milwaukee for forty years, but now resides in Madison.You can find more about her on her website here (https://www.mltpoet.com/).

What ideas made our country what it is today? In her latest book, UW-Madison history professor Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen explores the history of thinkers and their thoughts in shaping public thought about liberty, religion, republicanism, and democracy.It’s called The Ideas That Made America: A Brief History, published in 2019 by Oxford University Press. She joined host George Dreckmann on the phone in this pledge drive edition of Madison BookBeat.About the guest: Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen (https://history.wisc.edu/people/ratner-rosenhagen-jennifer/) is the Merle Curti and Vilas-Borghesi Distinguished Achievement Professor of History at UW-Madison, where she specializes in US intellectual and cultural history across philosophy, political and social theory, literature, and the arts.She is also the author of American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas (University of Chicago Press, 2012) as well as co-editor of Protest on the Page: Essays on Print and the Culture of Dissent since 1865 (UW Press, 2015) and The Worlds of American Intellectual History (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Madison BookBeat hosts Angie Trudell Vasquez and Devin Trudell speak with Christina Kubasta (https://www.ckubasta.com/home), managing editor, of the poetry collection Sheltering with Poems from Bent Paddle Press. This collection of poems was edited by Bruce Dethlefsen, Kathleen Serley and Angela Voras-Hills. We speak with Christina Kubasta on how the collection came to be, what her role is as the managing editor, and listen to her read some poems from the collection.