Past Forward

Annabelle Gurwitch is an actress, activist, and author of five books including The New York Times bestseller and Thurber Prize finalist I See You Made an Effort. She’s written for The New Yorker, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, LA Magazine and Hadassahamongst other publications. 

Without These Books is a thank-you-inspired Video/Podcast. Each episode celebrates authors, books, and characters that changed us as writers, readers, and as people. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast. Watch on our YouTube channel or at pastforward.org.

Annabelle Gurwitch selected Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich for her episode of Without These Books.

Peter Friedrichs is a pastor of a religiously liberal and socially progressive church. He lives in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania with his wife and biggest supporter, Irene. They are the proud parents of two adult daughters and grandparents of three elementary-aged boys.

And the Stars Kept Watch
Atmosphere Press, 2021

A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers during the pandemic. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.

Without Books®, a division of Heritage Future, is an author-centric book initiative. Our resources support authors. We also provide access to millions of books.

Scott O’Connor is the author of A Perfect Universe: Ten Stories, the novels Zero Zone, Untouchable, and Half World and the novella Among Wolves. He has been awarded the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, and his stories have been shortlisted for the Sunday Times/EFG Story Prize and cited as Distinguished in Best American Short Stories. Additional work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Paris Review, Zyzzyva, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He teaches creative writing at Cal State Channel Islands and in workshops around Los Angeles.

Without These Books is a thank-you-inspired Video/Podcast. Each episode celebrates authors, books, and characters that changed us as writers, readers, and as people. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast. Watch on our YouTube channel or at pastforward.org.

Scott O'Connor selected Libra by Don Delillo for his episode of Without These Books.

Jacqueline T. Johnson is an avid reader, who dared to fulfill a dream with her debut novel Test of Time. "Writing is an expression of who I am. It's where my emotions, thoughts, and dreams come alive."

Test of Time
Createspace, 2013

A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers during the pandemic. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.

Without Books®, a division of Heritage Future, is an author-centric book initiative. Our resources support authors. We also provide access to millions of books.

Seth Greenland is the author of five novels. He is a playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and one of the original hosts of the Los Angeles Review of Books Radio Hour. His first memoir, A Kingdom of Tender Colors, was published in 2020. Greenland’s play, Jungle Rot, won the Kennedy Center/American Express Fund For New American Plays Award and the American Theater Critics Association Award. 

Television credits include a two-year stint as a writer-producer on the Emmy-nominated HBO series Big Love. His essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Quillette, the Jewish Journal, and the French literary journal America. Greenland lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the author Susan Kaiser Greenland. He is currently at work on a new novel.

Without These Books is a thank-you-inspired Video/Podcast. Each episode celebrates authors, books, and characters that changed us as writers, readers, and as people. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast. Watch on our YouTube channel or at pastforward.org.

Seth Greenland selected Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth for his episode of Without These Books.

Bella Masala is a creator of art of all sorts. She recently quit her job to pursue her passion in writing, which she crafts with love. She currently lives in Silver Spring, MD.

The Ghost Queen
Atmosphere Press, 2020

A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers during the pandemic. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.

Without Books®, a division of Heritage Future, is an author-centric book initiative. Our resources support authors. We also provide access to millions of books.

Dani Putney is a queer, non-binary, mixed-race Filipinx, & neurodivergent writer originally from Sacramento, California. Their poems appear in outlets such as Empty Mirror, Ghost City Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Juke Joint Magazine, & trampset, while their personal essays can be found in journals such as Cold Mountain Review & Glassworks Magazine, among others. They received their MFA in Creative Writing from Mississippi University for Women & are presently an English PhD student at Oklahoma State University. While not always (physically) there, they permanently reside in the middle of the Nevada desert.

Salamat Sa Intersectionality
Okay Donkey Press, 2021

A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers during the pandemic. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.

Without Books®, a division of Heritage Future, is an author-centric book initiative. Our resources support authors. We also provide access to millions of books.

Christy Leskovar was born in Butte, Montana, and grew up in Kennewick, Washington. She graduated from Seattle University with degrees in mechanical engineering and French and then joined Bechtel in Gaithersburg, Maryland, where she worked on the design of nuclear power plants. After stints in Kansas, Barcelona, and San Francisco, she transferred to an assignment in Las Vegas. It was during a visit to her hometown that she learned the shocking news about her great-grandmother having been arrested for murder (in 1913). She left her engineering career to find out what happened and write a book about it.

East of the East Side
Farcountry Press, 2021

A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers during the pandemic. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.

Without Books®, a division of Heritage Future, is an author-centric book initiative. Our resources support authors. We also provide access to millions of books.

J.D. Jahn, a native of Iowa, studied British literature in college and graduate school. He published scholarly articles on English Renaissance poetry as an assistant professor of English, before moving on to serve as a writer, editor, and director of communications and marketing for six higher education foundations. Now retired, he lives in St. Augustine, Florida, with his wife, who's also a devoted Anglophile.

The Crone’s Tales: Fables for New Times
Atmosphere Press, 2021

A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers during the pandemic. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.

Without Books®, a division of Heritage Future, is an author-centric book initiative. Our resources support authors. We also provide access to millions of books.

Ryan Gattis is the author of Safe, Kung Fu High School, The System, and All Involved, which won the American Library Association’s Alex Award and the Lire Award for Noir of the Year (France). He lives and writes in South Los Angeles, where he is a member of art collective UGLARworks, a founding board member of arts non-profit Heritage Future, and a PEN America Prison Writing Mentor. 

Without These Books is a thank-you-inspired Video/Podcast. Each episode celebrates authors, books, and characters that changed us as writers, readers, and as people. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast. Watch on our YouTube channel or at pastforward.org.

Ryan Gattis selected Ask the Dust by John Fante for his episode of Without These Books.