Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

In this episode of Writer’s Voice, Francesca Rheannon speaks with biographer Robert M. Dowling about his biography, Coyote: The Dramatic Lives of Sam Shepard.

Dowling explores Shepard’s groundbreaking theatrical innovations, his jazz-inspired rhythms, and his shamanistic approach to performance — along with the deep fear that powered his work. 

“He feared the estrangement — our estrangement from the earth, from ourselves, from reality even.” — Robert Dowling

Another writer who loved the deserts of California, as Sam Shepard did, was the poet Forrest Gander. We re-air a conversation with him from April of 2025 about his book-length poem, Mojave Ghost.

And finally, Francesca reads a powerful ode written by former US Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman to Renee Nicole Good, “For Renee Nicole Good Killed by I.C.E. on January 7, 2026.”

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Tags: Sam Shepard biography, Robert M. Dowling, Coyote, American playwrights, Forrest Gander, Renée Nicole Good, Amanda Gorman, Writer’s Voice podcast

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In our conversation about Coyote, Robert M. Dowling traces Sam Shepard’s evolution from “punk rock cowboy playwright” to cultural visionary, explaining how Shepard rejected realism to project inner turmoil directly onto the stage.

Dowling discusses Shepard’s use of humor as a survival mechanism, his musical sense of theater rooted in jazz and percussion, and his lifelong struggle with fear — shaped by a violent father and mirrored in what Shepard saw as America’s own self-loathing.

The episode also examines Shepard’s ideas about masculinity, political polarization, and alienation, before closing with a moving account of his final months and relentless devotion to writing.

Robert M. Dowling is s professor of English at Central Connecticut State University. In addition to Coyote, He is the author of the biography, Eugene O’Neill: A Life in Four Acts.

Listen to or Read a Sample from Coyote

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

In this episode of Writer’s Voice, journalist Nell Bernstein examines the decades-long movement to end youth incarceration in the United States, drawing on her book In Our Future We Are Free. Bernstein traces how incarcerated young people, their parents, lawyers, and organizers pierced the invisibility of youth prisons and achieved a historic 75% reduction in youth incarceration nationwide.

“Youth prisons are inherently abusive by design.” — Nell Bernstein

In the second segment, chef and writer Tamar Adler discusses Feast On Your Life, a deeply personal calendar-based book that explores how cooking, leftovers, sobriety, ritual, and attention can transform the ordinary into something sustaining—even during periods of despair.

“The bean broth wouldn’t let me be.” — Tamar Adler

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Key Words: youth incarceration, prison abolition, juvenile justice reform, Nell Bernstein, In Our Future We Are Free, Tamar Adler, Feast On Your Life, sustainability, leftovers,

You Might Also Like: Nell Bernstein, BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE, Katherine Harvey, The Bare Bones Broth Cookbook

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Bernstein reflects on the evolution of her reporting from Burning Down the House to In Our Future We Are Free, documenting how youth prisons—institutions she describes as abusive by design—have been challenged and dismantled through organizing led by incarcerated young people and their families.

She explains why youth incarceration is not rehabilitative but criminogenic, how racialized fear narratives like the “super predator” myth enabled abuse, and why abolition—not cosmetic reform—is necessary. Bernstein also draws connections to present-day immigration detention and reflects on what this movement teaches us about sustained social change under authoritarian conditions.

Segment Two Summary: Tamar Adler

Adler describes writing Feast On Your Life during a period of depression, using daily attention to food and cooking as a way to heal. Organized month-by-month, the book reflects on sobriety, leftovers, seasonal abundance, restraint, imagination, ritual, and gratitude.

She discusses cooking “as if people mattered,” the ethical and ecological connections embedded in everyday meals, and how small rituals—packing lunches, saving bean broth, sharing fruit—create meaning and resilience. Drawing on Ursula K. Le Guin’s carrier bag theory, Adler frames her work as a quiet, gathering-oriented alternative to spectacle-driven narratives.

Read An Excerpt

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

Today we explore what it really means to share the planet with other forms of life. We’ll talk with writer Bridget Lyons about her acclaimed book, Entwined: Dispatches from the Intersection of Species, a collection of essays that invites us to see animals, plants, and even ourselves in a radically more connected way.

“Part of the reason I wrote this book was to encourage people, inspire people to just go outside and look around and see who else is living around you.” — Bridget Lyons

And then we’ll hear an excerpt from our conversation with ecologist and author Carl Safina about his book Alfie and Me, the extraordinary story of a baby owl that helped him rethink what animals know — and what humans believe. 

“People have often said humans are the only logical animals, but I think that’s almost completely backward. We’re really the only illogical animals.” — Carl Safina

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Key Words: Bridget Lyons, Entwined, Carl Safina, Alfie and Me, Writers Voice podcast, animal intelligence, anthropomorphism, biodiversity, environmental ethics, sea stars, interspecies relationships

You Might Also Like: Adam Nicholson on BIRD SCHOOL, Richard Louv, OUR WILD CALLING & Carl Safina, BEYOND WORDS

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Bridget Lyons describes how her essays begin with encounters with other species — kelp, whales, sea stars, fireweed, octopuses — and expand into questions about value, empathy, humility, and how humans might live differently on the planet.

She explains that real connection begins with paying attention:

“Part of the reason I wrote this book was to encourage people, inspire people to just go outside and look around and see who else is living around you.”

Lyons argues that wonder leads to empathy and responsibility:

“As you become more connected to them, you feel more empathy for their life situation and what’s going on with them.”

One of the book’s core themes is rethinking value — not just in economic terms, but in terms of being:

“Can I, as a person, learn to value this creature for just being who it is, rather than for how it serves me, how it bothers me, etc.”

Lyons also speaks about humility in the face of ecological complexity:

“We all need a hefty, hefty dose of humility.”

And about how curiosity builds respect across species:

“The more you learn, or the more you learn that you don’t know, or the more that you marvel at something that another creature is doing, the more I think you’re creating a bridge.”

Carl Safina tells the story of raising a baby screech owl named Alfie and what that relationship revealed about how animals experience the world — and how humans misunderstand it.

Safina challenges the idea that humans are uniquely rational:

“People have often said humans are the only logical animals, but I think that’s almost completely backward. We’re really the only illogical animals.”

He explains how human beliefs often override evidence:

“We’re the only ones who carry on through the world based on our beliefs rather than on evidence about how the world is and what the world around us is.”

Safina describes why freedom matters even when safety is available:

“That is not life. It’s pure safety, but there’s no shot at being part of the world or part of the future.”

And he reflects on what it means to witness another being’s full life unfold:

“I got to know something about these birds, and then I started to ask myself, well, why are we so blind to all of this?”

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Eric Lichtblau joins Writer’s Voice to discuss his new book, American Reich, a gripping investigation that begins with the murder of Blaze Bernstein in Orange County and expands into a sweeping analysis of white nationalism in 21st-century America.

“We’ve seen an enormous surge in hate crimes across the board… and this is horribly symptomatic of the rise of the neo-Nazis in the 21st century.” — Eric Lichtblau

Lichtblau traces how online extremism, political normalization of hate, and leaderless neo-Nazi networks have collided to shape a dangerous new era—one that has produced waves of hate crimes, radicalized young white men, and emboldened supremacist movements.

Lichtblau also explores the role of Trump-era politics, the mechanics of recruitment and radicalization — and what gives him hope for resistance and solidarity.

We also re-air a clip from our 2017 interview with photojournalist Zach Roberts about his viral photos of the brutal beating of De’Andre Harris by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia during the Unite the Right rally on August 12 of that year.

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Key Words: American Reich, Eric Lichtblau, Writer’s Voice podcast
white supremacy, neo-Nazis, hate crimes, online extremism
replacement theory, Trump white nationalism

You Might Also Like: Zach Roberts on Charlottesville attack, Michael German on POLICING WHITE SUPREMACY

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Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

What does a 2,000-year-old epic have to say to us today about exile, duty, love, power, war, misinformation, and the fragile hopes of human community?

A great deal, say translators Scott McGill and Susannah Wright, whose new English translation of Virgil’s Aeneid captures both the grandeur of the epic and its deeply human emotional core.

“We were really keen to try to capture…the humanity of the poem, the deep pathos that Virgil generates, the power of the emotional world of the poem.”

In this conversation, they talk about collaboration, emotion, translation craft, and why the Aeneid remains one of the most morally and politically provocative works ever written—wrestling with migration, empire, trauma, rage, resilience, and the cost of duty.

They also explore unforgettable characters like Aeneas and Dido, the role of Rumor as an ancient “fake news engine,” and what we gain when we keep engaging with the classics today.

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Key Words: Virgil, Aeneid translation, Scott McGill, Susannah Wright, Aeneas and Dido, Roman empire, epic poem, Writer’s Voice podcast,

You Might Also Like: James Romm, DYING EVERY DAY & Robert Knapp, INVISIBLE ROMANS, James Romm, THE SACRED BAND

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Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

In this episode of Writer’s Voice, we explore the what’s going on with the current resurgence of psychedelics. My guest is Joe Dolce, whose new book, Modern Psychedelics: The Handbook for Mindful Exploration, dives deep into what these substances really do, why so many people are using them, and how science, politics, medicine, and culture are reshaping the conversation.

Dolce tells us why this is both an “exciting and confusing time” in psychedelic history—a time when reliable guidance is urgently needed in a moment of expanding access and misinformation. 

“I thought it was a good opportunity… there’s still so much confusion and so much misinformation about what these are, how they work, why they work, who they don’t work for, who should take them, who shouldn’t take them.” — Joe Dolce

We talk about what psychedelics can help heal — from PTSD and addiction to  depression and traumatic brain injury, why set and setting matter so deeply, how to micro dose psychedelics and how these substances can change not only individual consciousness, but maybe even how we relate to each other, to nature, and to the world we’re trying to save. 

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Key Words: Writer’s Voice podcast, Francesca Rheannon, Joe Dolce interview, Modern Psychedelics book, psychedelics research, PTSD psychedelics, traumatic brain injury psychedelics, microdosing, ibogaine therapy, MDMA therapy, psilocybin depression, psychedelics and spirituality

You Might Also Like: David Goodman, AN AMERICAN CANNABIS STORY & Carl Hart, DRUG USE FOR GROWNUPS, Alexandra Chasin, ASSASSIN OF YOUTH & Mason Tvert, MARIJUANA IS SAFER

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Joe Dolce traces the renewed psychedelics movement from cultural taboo to scientific renaissance. He explains why psychedelics are not like traditional pharmaceuticals, discusses risks, cautions, and who shouldn’t take them, and explores compelling new research into “critical periods of brain learning,” microdosing, mystical experience, and emotional healing. The conversation also looks at capitalism, policy battles, the underground psychedelic community, and the deep spiritual questions these substances raise.

Listen to or Read A Sample

Key Topics

• Why psychedelics are returning to medicine and culture
• The difference between psychedelics and pharmaceuticals
• Preparing for a psychedelic experience: set, setting & safety
• Psychedelics and trauma healing
• Spiritual experience and meaning
• Microdosing: myth vs reality
• Policy, legality & capitalism
• The underground psychedelic community
• How people are accessing psychedelics today

The Fireside Project

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

Francesca speaks with Jonathan Slaght about his remarkable book Tigers Between Empires: The Improbable Return of Great Cats to the Forests of Russia and China.

Slaght tells the story of the 35-year Siberian (Amur) Tiger Project, one of the longest-running wildlife studies in the world, and how science, persistence, and cross-border collaboration helped bring a species back from the edge of extinction.

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Key Words: Jonathan Slaght interview, Tigers Between Empires, Amur tiger conservation, Siberian Tiger Project, wildlife conservation Russia China,
endangered species recovery, human–wildlife conflict

You Might Also Like: Adam Hart, DEADLY BALANCE, Gloria Dickie, EIGHT BEARS

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Jonathan Slaght recounts the extraordinary history of the Amur (Siberian) tiger’s decline and recovery, drawing on decades of field research conducted by Russian and American scientists working across political boundaries.

Our conversation opens with the story of Lidiya, a tigress whose seven-year reproductive record illustrates how a single animal can anchor population recovery when conditions are right. Slaght explains how the Siberian Tiger Project broke new ground by tracking individual tigers across their entire lifespans, yielding insights into reproduction, survival, territory size, and the pressures that most threaten the species .

The conversation traces how 19th-century border treaties between Russia and China fragmented tiger habitat, accelerating hunting and habitat loss—only for those same borders, decades later, to become sites of coordinated protection. Slaght discusses the pivotal role of Soviet-era hunting bans, protected areas, and later rapid-response teams that reduced human-tiger conflict by intervening quickly when tigers approached villages .

He also reflects on the conservation philosophy of “green fire,” inherited from Aldo Leopold and championed by early project leaders, which treats top predators as essential to ecosystem health rather than threats to be eliminated.

Finally, Slaght looks ahead, emphasizing that government commitment and international collaboration—including newly coordinated Russian-Chinese protected areas—are essential to sustaining the Amur tiger’s recovery in a time of climate change and geopolitical strain .

Read An Excerpt

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

This week on Writer’s Voice, we look at two stories from history that illuminate the choices people face as they confront evil: collaborate or resist?

First, independent scholar Charles Dick joins us to discuss Unknown Enemy: The Hidden Nazi Force That Built the Third Reich — the first full account of Organisation Todt, the massive construction arm of the Nazi regime that operated across Europe with lethal brutality. His book reveals how ordinary engineers and builders became central participants in enslavement and murder — and how much of this history remained hidden for decades.

“If you’re told… your prisoners are subhuman, you’re more likely to work them to death.” — Charles Dick

Then, in Segment Two, biographer Carla Kaplan returns to Writer’s Voice to talk about Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford. Kaplan brings to life the incomparable “Decca” Mitford — aristocrat, Communist, civil-rights activist and bestselling muckraker.

“If she believed in something, she was unbending — and always willing to pay the price of her convictions.”  — Carla Kaplan

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Key Words: Unknown Enemy Charles Dick, Fritz Todt, Holocaust studies, Jessica Mitford biography, Troublemaker Carla Kaplan, The American Way of Death, muckraking journalism, civil rights history, Freedom Rides, Mitford sisters,Francesca Rheannon interview,

You Might Also Like: Carla Kaplan, MISS ANNE IN HARLEM, Andrew Nagorski, THE NAZI HUNTERS

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Historian Charles Dick exposes the full scope of Organisation Todt (OT) — the Nazi regime’s massive, understudied construction force. OT built the Autobahn, the massive North Atlantic coastal fortifications and Hitler’s underground weapons factories; oversaw millions of enslaved laborers; and carried out brutal operations across occupied Europe.

Despite its central role, OT escaped the scrutiny that fell on the SS and Wehrmacht — leaving its crimes obscured until now.

Dick explains how:

He shares harrowing survivor accounts revealed in the book — from Ukraine, Alderney, Estonia, Stutthof, and the Kaufering/Dachau subcamps — stories long buried in archives.

Biographer Carla Kaplan returns to discuss Jessica Mitford — aristocrat-turned-revolutionary, Communist organizer, civil-rights witness, and author of the groundbreaking exposé The American Way of Death.

Kaplan traces Mitford’s transformation from an eccentric, cloistered, aristocratic childhood among the infamous Mitford sisters — including Nazi sympathizers Diana and Unity — to her self-invented life as a radical activist and bestselling writer in the U.S.

Kaplan shares:

Read An Excerpt

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

In this episode of Writer’s Voice, Francesca Rheannon speaks with Susana M. Morris, acclaimed scholar of Black feminist thought, about her new biography Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler.

Drawing on interviews, archival materials, and Butler’s own journals, Morris shows how Butler’s discipline, political analysis, and upbringing shaped some of the most influential speculative fiction of our time.

“Now there is such a plethora of Black folk… writing science fiction and fantasy. It’s really exciting. And we have Octavia to thank for it.”  — Susana Morris

The conversation covers Butler’s formative years; her neurodivergence and self-diagnosed dyslexia; her relationship with her mother; the creation of Kindred; and her prophetic insights into climate collapse, fascism, hierarchy, and the contradictions of American democracy.

Then, we air a clip from our 2012 interview with the late, great science fiction master, Ursula K. Le Guin.

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Key Words: Octavia Butler biography, Octavia Butler interview, Positive Obsession Susana Morris, Parable of the Sower prophecy, Black women writers, Afrofuturism, science fiction history, Black feminist literature, Francesca Rheannon interview,

You Might Also Like: Ursula K. Le Guin, THE UNREAL AND THE REAL, Cory Doctorow, THE LOST CAUSE.

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Main Segment — Susana M. Morris on Positive Obsession

Morris reveals how Octavia Butler’s childhood experiences—especially witnessing the humiliating treatment of her mother, a domestic worker—shaped her lifelong political and creative vision.

She explains Butler’s “positive obsession,” the relentless work ethic that drove her writing; her rigorous research process; her early awareness of environmental crisis; and her pattern recognition around racism, patriarchy, and authoritarianism.

Morris also situates Butler within the Black women’s literary renaissance alongside Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, Toni Cade Bambara, and others, while emphasizing Butler’s singular contributions to speculative fiction and Afrofuturism.

Read an Excerpt from Positive Obsession

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

In this, our 1,000th episode of Writer’s Voice, Francesca Rheannon interviews Julian Brave Noisecat about We Survived the Night, his memoir weaving Indigenous oral traditions, personal narrative, political history, and  environmental insight.

Noisecat explores Coyote stories, the legacy of residential schools, intergenerational trauma, mixed-race identity, the meaning of home, Indigenous political traditions, and the contemporary struggle for land, water, and cultural continuity.

“The text itself is a woven narrative that combines different elements of nonfiction to put these different kinds of truths and storytelling in conversation with each other.”

Through humor, grief, myth, and investigative rigor, Noisecat reframes Indigenous storytelling as nonfiction — a mode of truth that Western traditions have long dismissed. This conversation highlights the power of indigenous stories to resist erasure, illuminate political histories, and recover cultural knowledge.

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Key Words: Julian Brave Noisecat interview, We Survived the Night, Indigenous memoir, Coyote stories, residential schools history, Native American literature, intergenerational trauma, Indigenous resurgence, Salish culture, environmental justice Indigenous communities, land dispossession history,

You Might Also Like: Rebecca Nagle, BY THE FIRE WE CARRY, Tyson Yunkaporta, SAND TALK

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[top image: carving by Ed Archie Noisecat]

Francesca speaks with Julian Brave Noisecat about his memoir/history We Survived the Night, structured around a four-day fasting tradition and infused with the oral-literary lineage of Coyote stories. Noisecat discusses his father’s birth at a residential school, the silence around Indigenous trauma, his family’s weaving traditions, and how Coyote mythology offers a language for understanding survival, contradiction, and the men in his family.

He describes the interconnection between land and people in Salish languages; the role of urban Native communities in activism; the Indigenous resurgence of the late 20th century; traditional ecological knowledge; and political tensions over fisheries, pipelines, and Arctic development. He also reflects on the personal: alcoholism, relationships, mixed-race identity, and the role of his mother in keeping him connected to his community.