Award-winning journalist Alisyn Camerota’s astonishing and witty memoir, Combat Love, details her dicey childhood, less-than-ideal upbringing, outlier friends, homelessness, and fascination with punk rock.

We discuss her reasons for writing it now, how her mother's past experiences affected how she was raised, and her family’s - especially her mother’s - reaction to it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alisyn_Camerota

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Actress and writer Hadley Boyd’s entertaining micro fiction recounts an evening in which a recent divorcée throws a far-too-expensive party in her new rental home, before realizing that the house is haunted by the woman who lived there before her.

Hadley speaks of her own experience as a divorcée, finally finding a home so she can be with her children, only to find… uch.

hadleyboyd.com

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In her newest book, Diaspora Daughter, Julie Sarkissian writes about a Gen X teen learning about her family’s harrowing escape from the Armenian Genocide in 1915.

Julie based her story on her great grandmother’s and great uncle’s devastating loss in the genocide, and ultimate rescue after four years of aimlessly wandering around Europe.

We discuss the difficut family anecdotes which comprise her great grandmother’s history and who, surprisingly, revealed them.

westportwriters.org/profile/jsarkissian

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WARNING: Graphic

Celebrated horror writer Clay McLeod Chapman reads from his newest book, Kill Your Darling, about a man whose son was hideously killed years before and the killer was never caught.

We discuss Clay’s lifelong fascination with horror and what makes horror such a compelling, though still taboo, genre.

claymcleodchapman.com

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Attorney and editor Viviana Vasiu writes a taut thriller about a murder in a sorority house, informed by her own college experience in Kappa Alpha Theta and navigating Rush.

We discuss the good and bad of sorority life and the reasons for its not-always-great reputation.

vivianavasiu.com

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TV writer Gigi Rios New bases her newest pilot, Mercy, on a real-life woman, Joan (Sophie in the pilot), who spent everything she had to keep her sick husband alive. 

Upon his death, having lost almost everything, her mother-in-law demands she return the “heirloom” engagement ring. Her friends expect her to rejoin society in a manner they find acceptable, and are angered by the sarcastic and irreverent manner in which Sophie tries to navigate widowhood.

Read with actress Jean Louisa Kelly.

imdb.com/name/nm1946569

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High school soccer coach and writer Dan Woog reads from, Jocks, his pioneering book about gay high school athletes published in 1997. 

A closeted gay male for most of his life, Woog wrote this bestseller during a turbulent and often dangerous era for homosexual men, giving voice to a population unapologetically expected to be straight.

After, we discuss the dramatic impact Jocks had on athletes, and the difficulty an administration had in trying to embrace its acceptance of it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Woog_(writer)

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