Past Forward

Aminah Mae Safi is a Muslim-American writer who explores art, fiction, feminism, and film. She's the winner of the We Need Diverse Books short story contest. She lives in Los Angeles, California, with her partner and two cats. She is the author of Not the Girls You're Looking For(Feiwel and Friends), Tell Me How You Really Feel(Feiwel and Friends), This Is All Your Fault (Feiwel and Friends, October 2020) and the forthcoming Reclaimed Classics Robin Hood (Winter 2022).

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.

Aminah Mae Safi selected From the Mixed-up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg for her episode of Without These Books.

Susan Jane Gilman is the author of five books: The novels “Donna Has Left the Building” and “The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street,” plus the memoirs “Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven,” “Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress” and “Kiss My Tiara.” She has been a commentator for NPR and written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Ms. magazine, among others. Though she lives in Geneva, Switzerland, she remains, eternally, a child of New York.”

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.

Susan Jane Gilman selected The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck for her episode of Without These Books.

Chad-Michael Simon was born in Toledo, Ohio and has been an illustrator at Root, Inc. for twenty years. He lives in Michigan with his wife, children, and pets. Yellowstone: The Bears of Caldera is his first novel.

Yellowstone: The Bears of Caldera
HyphenatedPress, 2019

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.

Jennifer D. Keene, Ph.D. is a professor of history and dean of the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University. She is a specialist in war and society studies, and has written extensively on World War I, especially on race relations and African American soldiers’ experiences. A past-president of the Society for Military History, Dr. Keene is also the lead author for an American history textbook, Visions of America: A History of the United States that uses a visual approach to teaching students U.S. history.

Stephanie Takaragawa is Associate Dean of the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Associate Professor of Sociology at Chapman University. She is a cultural anthropologist and her research areas examine race, visual media and American culture broadly, with an emphasis on Asian American and Japanese-American identity issues. She was the co-directorof the Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on Race series.

Prexy Nesbitt holds the position of Presidential Fellow in Peace Studies at Chapman University. Born on Chicago’s West Side, “Prexy” (Rozell W.) Nesbitt has spent more than five decades as an educator, activist, and speaker on Africa, foreign policy, and racism. Prexy has had the honor of knowing and working for the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Eduardo Mondlane, Samora Machel and Mayor Harold Washington. Additionally, he has worked closely with Amilcar Cabral, Julius Nyerere, Nelson Mandela, and Graca Machel.

Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on the Significance of Race is a ten-part podcast series of informed and enriching dialogues to help us better understand our world – how we got here, who we are, and where we are going as a society. This series engages in conversations with scholars, artists, filmmakers, and activists to investigate racial inequality, systemic racism, racial terrorism, and racial justice and reconciliation. Through education, art, and storytelling, we can all learn to be allies and engage the world to help evolve to a place of compassion and social equity.

Guest: Jennifer D. Keene, Stephanie Takaragawa, and Prexy Nesbitt
Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by Public Podcasting in partnership with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University.

Will Johnson is a musician and songwriter who has played in the bands Centro-matic, South San Gabriel, Marie/Lepanto, Overseas, New Multitudes, and Monsters of Folk. He also releases records under his own name, and makes paintings centering on the subject of baseball and its history. His work has appeared in American Short Fiction. He was born in Kennett, Missouri, and currently lives in Austin, Texas. If or When I Call is his first novel.

If or When I Call
Goliad Media Group, 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.

Lucy May Lennox is a connoisseur of novels featuring men with physical disabilities. After growing frustrated with all the cliches, ignorance and stereotypes, she decided to write her own positive take on disability. She also loves immersing herself in earlier historical periods and imagining the lives of people who don't usually make it into the history books. She lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest USA with her husband and children.

Flowers by Night
Lucy May Lennox, 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.

Dr. Monique Charles’ research combines her interests in music, spirituality, sociology and the African Diaspora. Other research interests include popular culture, music/musicology, sound studies, embodiment, spirituality, cultural studies, class, gender and race. She primarily explores the lives, experiences and cultural productions of the African Diaspora generally and Britain specifically. Monique will be joining the Chapman sociology faculty in 2021.

Listen to Monique Charles' lecture at chapman.edu/wilkinson.

Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on the Significance of Race is a ten-part podcast series of informed and enriching dialogues to help us better understand our world – how we got here, who we are, and where we are going as a society. This series engages in conversations with scholars, artists, filmmakers, and activists to investigate racial inequality, systemic racism, racial terrorism, and racial justice and reconciliation. Through education, art, and storytelling, we can all learn to be allies and engage the world to help evolve to a place of compassion and social equity.

Guest: Monique Charles
Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by Public Podcasting in partnership with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University.

Formerly a violinist at the Metropolitan Opera, Erica Miner is now a full-time award-winning writer, screenwriter, lecturer and journalist. She regularly contributes to major arts websites and presents her opera lectures on both coasts. Her "Opera Mystery" novel series, based on her own experience as a longtime violinist at the Met, allows a candid glimpse at this eccentric art form's inner world.

Staged for Murder
Twilight Times Books, 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.

Joyce Yarrow is a Pushcart Prize Nominee with short stories and essays that have appeared in Inkwell Journal, Whistling Shade, Descant, Arabesques, and Weber: The Contemporary West and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Yarrow is a member of the Sisters in Crime organization and has presented workshops on “The Place of Place in Mystery Writing” at conferences in the US and India.

Zahara and the Lost Books of Light
Adelaide Books, 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.

Barbara McHugh, PhD, is a Buddhist practitioner with a degree in Religion and Literature from the Graduate Theological Union and UC Berkeley. She is a published poet and writing coach. Her research for this book includes exhaustive study of Pali texts in translation and extensive travel in India.

Bride of the Buddha
Monkfish, 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.