The National Writers Series Podcast

What do Steve Miller, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, and Diana Ross have in common? They all worked with legendary musician Ben Sidran.

Sidran sat down with Traverse City musician Jeff Haas on October 11th, 2015 for a discussion about Sidran's newest book: There Was a Fire: Jews, Music and the American Dream. The book charts the myriad and unexpected ways that Jews influenced American music, including the Great American Songbook. 

Sidran; a Peabody award winner for his NPR series, “Jazz Alive,” and VH-1’s “New Vision” series, took to the stage with Haas and a grand piano for a few musical interludes in this unique event full of engaging words, eclectic music, and behind-the-scenes American music history.

On September 29th, 2013, the final episode of TV's legendary series "Breaking Bad" aired on AMC. We thought we'd take this opportunity to look back on series creator Vince Gilligan's appearance on the NWS stage the year prior. He joined us just a few months prior to the start of the show's amazing final season in February 2012.

Gilligan - no stranger to northern Michigan, having attended the Interlochen Center for the Arts as a teen - sat down with NWS co-founder Doug Stanton to talk about the art of TV and film screenwriting, life in a writers room, and even a live script reading to show how the words on the page are transformed by the actors who embody them. 

If you know a high school student who might want to try their hand at scriptwriting, the NWS is hosting a special class soon through our Front Street Writers Program. Head to our site to learn more.

Fall is a great time for a road trip (Tunnel of Trees, anyone?) and since A.J. Baime and Bryce Hoffman joined the NWS around this time in September 2014, we thought we'd revisit their discussion as a great soundtrack to your next long drive. 

At the end of 2008, Ford Motor Company was in the fight of its life but when Congress threw it a taxpayer lifeline, Ford ignored it. Instead, the iconic company under the leadership of Alan Mulally pulled off one of the biggest comebacks in business history. It would become one of the great management narratives of our time.  While the rest of Detroit collapsed, Ford went from the brink of bankruptcy to being the most profitable automaker in the world.  

From his front-row seat as the Ford beat reporter for the Detroit News, Hoffman conducted hundreds of interviews and gleaned top-secret documents, memos, and archives to craft compelling narrative nonfiction that reads like a high-stakes drama. American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company has become a manual for CEOs and a guide for organizations that want to transform their cultures and build winning teams.  

A.J. Baime is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal and an editor-at-large at Playboy. In his latest book Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War, the Ford Motor Company and its production of the B-24 Liberator heavy bomber take center stage. He focuses on Ford’s B-24 bomber plant outside Detroit in Willow Run, where for the first time engineers attempted to mass-produce airplanes the way they did cars. It’s an engrossing story that Baime described as an opportunity to “tell a rich story about the most important collective achievement of any city in the nation’s history, and that’s Detroit during World War II.”  

Baime’s first book Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans, was the basis for the motion picture "Ford V Ferrari" starring Christian Bale and Matt Damon.

September 1st is the publish date of "The Surgeon" in 2001. It's perhaps better known as the very first novel featuring detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles, who are now famously the lead characters in the long-running show "Rizzoli & Isles" on TNT. 

Since it's the 20th anniversary of that book's release, we thought we'd revisit our chat with the author: Tess Gerritsen.

Gerritsen joined the NWS for a conversation in January 2015 that ranged from her mother's love of horror movies to her career in medicine to the first novels she wrote in the romance genre before turning to thrillers. Our guest host for this episode of the NWS podcast is Kerrey Woughter.

This week, the National Writers Series is announcing a new slate of Front Street Writers classes for student writers around the Grand Traverse area. While we're doing that, we thought, why not look back to the origins of our Raising Writers programming?

When Tom Brokaw came to Traverse City a decade ago, he didn't just make an appearance at the City Opera House - no, he also sat down with an auditorium full of Traverse City West High School students for a discussion and Q&A session. This audio, recorded at that event, probably hasn't been heard in years - until today. 

If you were at this event, send us an email! If you know someone who you think might have been at this event, please send them this episode and see if they remember being there. We'd love to know what the students in the room thought about that day, and how it might have even influenced their future paths. Contact info is in the episode - enjoy!

Since we have a superstar Young Adult author scheduled to join the NWS in the Fall 2021 Season (Friends of the NWS know who we're talking about!), we thought we'd look back at the first YA author to grace the NWS Stage: Maggie Stiefvater.

Stiefvater is the author of "Shiver," the first novel in her famed Wolves of Mercy Falls series, which debuted in August of 2009. She joined us for a conversation in 2012 in advance of her novel "Raven Boys," hosted by Bookends blogger and young adult reviewer Lynn Rutan.

It was Ernest Hemingway's 122nd birthday last week, which we are belatedly celebrating here, but we're also going to celebrate the 100th anniversary of his wedding to Hadley Richardson. Hemingway wed his first wife in 1921 and they honeymooned up in Northern Michigan at their cottage on Walloon Lake before moving to Paris.

That's where Paula McLain comes in. She’s the author of a book called The Paris Wife, which is about the couple's life in Paris and it's told through Richardson's voice. That book came out in 2011 and it was a huge hit, selling over 1.5 million copies.

McLain joined us for a live event at the City Opera House a few years after that – the conversation we’ll be listening to today comes from 2015, in advance of her book Circling the Sun. We talk about that book, about her decision to start her career as a poet, and about Hadley Richardson. Our guest host for this discussion is author Benjamin Busch.

We're doing something a little different this week! As the National Writers Series gets ready to welcome bestselling author Megan Miranda to the virtual stage this week, we thought we'd give you a little preview of her style and thought process from a conversation we hosted last year. 

Fellow suspense author Ruth Ware joined the NWS last September, with guest host Megan Miranda at the reins! In hopes of maximizing our Megan Miranda material, we're sharing this podcast with you (a little earlier in the week than usual!) in the hopes that you'll join us this Thursday, July 22 at 7pm (ET) for our Evening with Megan Miranda. Head to our site at nationalwritersseries.org to register for free. 

Ruth Ware joined us live from her home in England for this conversation that ranges from how these authors structure their whodunits to what forms of media frighten them to a great selection of audience Q&A. Even if you can't join us this Thursday, it's still a great discussion about the art and craft of the thriller novel. Thanks for listening! 

We've been spending a lot of time outside over the past few weeks and months, some of it wandering the Teichner Preserve on Lime Lake. We thought that since the Cherry Fest crowds have parted ways with the TC area once again, we might be able to convince some of you to head there as well.

What better way to do that than to share our conversation with Martha Teichner, CBS Sunday Morning correspondent and author of "When Harry Met Minnie"? She joined us earlier this year when the weather wasn't quite as kind for outdoor activities, and it was one of the most popular events of our Spring Season. 

We discussed her first book as well as her history growing up in the Traverse City area, as well as how she and the Leelanau Conservancy helped to save her family's land for future generations as the Teichner Preserve. If you weren't able to join this special ticketed event as it happened, good news - the full conversation is now right here. 

Benjamin Busch is probably best known for his acting career: He played the character of officer Tony Colicchio in the HBO series “The Wire” and has had roles in shows like "Generation Kill" and "The West Wing." Ben is quite active in many other creative pursuits, including writing, filmmaking, photography, and stonemasonry. He’s written many poems and essays for various collections and periodicals. 

Ben is also a veteran officer of the U.S. Marine Corps and served two tours in Iraq. His memoir “Dust to Dust” came out in 2012. That year, Ben talked with Doug Stanton on the stage of the City Opera House in Traverse City. We thought that this sprawling two-hour conversation could be a great companion for the Independence Day holiday, and we hope you enjoy the discussion. 

If you were there in person, you would have seen Ben's entrance to the stage via roller skates, along with him smashing pottery and calling for chairs that dropped seemingly out of the sky. That doesn't work very well in an audio format so we've jumped straight into the conversation, but just know that it does come up in reference here and there throughout the episode.