The National Writers Series Podcast

The National Writers series was honored to host Nita Prose at the City Opera House on December 6th, 2023. Nita Prose is the author of The Maid, which has sold over 1 million copies worldwide and was published in over 40 countries. A #1 New York Times bestseller and a Good Morning America Book Club pick, The Maid won the Ned Kelly Award for International Crime Fiction and was an Edgar Awards finalist for Best Novel. The Mystery Guest is a new mess. A new mystery. And it's up to Molly the Maid to uncover the truth, no matter how dirty. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nationalwritersseries/message

Erin French joined the National Writers Series at the City Opera House on November 8, 2023 with guest host Cara McDonald. Erin French is the owner and chef of The Lost Kitchen, a 40-seat restaurant in Freedom, Maine, that was recently named one of TIME Magazine’s World’s Greatest Places and one of “12 Restaurants Worth Traveling Across the World to Experience” by Bloomberg. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir, Finding Freedom, and features in Magnolia Network’s The Lost Kitchen, which is now in its third season. A born-and-raised native of Maine, she learned early the simple pleasures of thoughtful food and the importance of gathering for a meal. Her love of sharing Maine and its delicious heritage with curious dinner guests and new friends alike has been lauded by such outlets such as The New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, NPR’s All Things Considered, The Chew, CBS This Morning, The Today Show, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and Food & Wine. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nationalwritersseries/message

Heather Cox Richardson joined the National Writers Series at Lars Hockstad Auditorium on October 17, 2023 with guest host Neal Rubin. Heather Cox Richardson is a Professor of History at Boston College. She has written about the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, and the American West in award-winning books whose subjects stretch from the European settlement of the North American continent to the history of the Republican Party through the Trump administration. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and The Guardian, among other outlets. She is the cohost of the Vox podcast, Now & Then. She began writing a daily Facebook essay in the midst of the 2019 impeachment crisis, providing historical context for the daily churn of news. It soon became a chart-topping Substack newsletter, Letters from an American, which now reaches more than 2 million subscribers – passionate, dedicated readers who rely on Richardson’s plainspoken, insightful take on America, past and present, as a much-needed dose of sanity in today’s insane world. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nationalwritersseries/message

The National Writers Series was pleased to welcome V.E. Schwab to Lars Hockstad Auditorium on October 7, 2023 with guest host Beth Milligan. VICTORIA “V. E.” SCHWAB is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books, including the acclaimed Shadesuniverse, the Villains series, the City of Ghosts series, Gallant, and the international bestseller The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. Her work has received critical acclaim, translated into over two dozen languages, and optioned for television and film. First Kill – a YA vampire series based on Schwab’s short story of the same name – is now a Netflix series. When not haunting Paris streets or trudging up English hillsides, she lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is usually tucked in the corner of a coffee shop, dreaming up monsters. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nationalwritersseries/message

Ken Follett joined the National Writers Series at the Alluvion on October 1st, 2023 with guest host Pat Livingston. Ken Follett is one of the world’s best-loved authors, selling more than 188 million copies of his 36 books. Follett’s first bestseller was “Eye of the Needle”, a spy story set in the Second World War. In 1989, “The Pillars of the Earth” was published and has since become Follett’s most popular novel. It reached number one on bestseller lists around the world and was an Oprah’s Book Club pick. Its sequels, “World Without End” and “A Column of Fire”, and prequel “The Evening and the Morning”, proved equally popular, and the Kingsbridge series has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide. Follett lives in Hertfordshire, England, with his wife, Barbara. Between them they have five children, six grandchildren, and three Labradors. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nationalwritersseries/message

Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson joined the National Writers Series onstage at the City Opera House on September 19, 2023 with guest host Benjamin Busch. Authors Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson are both journalists at the Wall Street Journal who have covered gun culture and the industry, including mass shootings, for years. McWhirter, who lives in Georgia, is the author of Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America. He has also written for The Atlanta Journal-Constituion, The Detroit News, and the Harvard Review. Elinson, who lives in California, has also written for the Center for Investigative Reporting and The New York Times. The authors received a MacDowell Fellowship to complete this book. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nationalwritersseries/message

The National Writers series was thrilled to host award-winning science writer Ed Yong at the City Opera House on September 12, 2023 with guest host Ed Ronco. Ed Yong won several honors for his reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic, including the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting and the George Polk Award for science reporting. His first book, I Contain Multitudes, was a New York Times bestseller. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, National Geographic, The New York Times, Wired, Scientific American, and more. He lives in Oakland, California. Ed is also the best-selling author of I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us, a groundbreaking look at the relationship between animals and microbes. His second book, An Immense World, takes a comprehensive look at the fascinating sensory worlds of animals. A New York Times bestseller, An Immense World is longlisted for the PEN America 2023 Literary Award and has made many Best Books of the Year lists. In addition to The Atlantic, his work has appeared in National Geographic, the New Yorker, Wired, Nature, New Scientist, and Scientific American, among others. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nationalwritersseries/message

The National Writers Series was honored to host Jack Driscoll at the Alluvion on August 27, 2023 with guest host Brittany Cavallaro. Jack Driscoll is a two-time NEA Creative Writing Fellowship recipient, a PEN/Nelson Algren Award winner, and the author of twelve books, including the story collections, Wanting Only to Be Heard (University of MA Press, 1992), winner of the AWP Grace Paley Short Fiction Prize and The World of a Few Minutes Ago (WSU Press, 2012), winner of the Society of Midland Authors Award and Michigan Notable Book Award. His most recent story collection, The Goat Fish and the Lover’s Knot(WSU Press, 2017) received a Michigan Notable Book Award and was a finalist for the John D. Gardner Short Fiction Prize. His stories have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, Ploughshares, Missouri Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, and New Stories from the Midwest. Driscoll was the founding father of the Interlochen Center for the Arts creative writing department, and now teaches in Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program. He resides in Mystic, CT. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nationalwritersseries/message

Ann Patchett joined the National Writers Series onstage at the City Opera House on August 12, 2023 with guest host Erin Anderson Whiting. Ann Patchett is the author of nine novels: The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, The Magician’s Assistant, Bel Canto, Run, State of Wonder, Commonwealth, The Dutch House and Tom Lake. She was the editor of Best American Short Stories, 2006, and has written four books of nonfiction–Truth & Beauty, about her friendship with the writer Lucy Grealy, What Now? an expansion of her graduation address at Sarah Lawrence College, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, a collection of essays examining the theme of commitment, and These Precious Days, essays on home, family, friendship, and writing. In 2019, she published her first children’s book, Lambslide, illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser, followed by Escape Goat in 2020. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Patchett has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a National Humanities Medal, England’s Women’s Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Book Sense Book of the Year, a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize, The Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the American Bookseller’s Association’s Most Engaging Author Award, and the Women’s National Book Association’s Award. Her novel, The Dutch House, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her books have been both New York Times Notable Books and New York Timesbestsellers. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nationalwritersseries/message

Readers of all ages will love this Young Adult adaptation of the moving, hopeful, and refreshingly candid memoir by Chasten Buttigieg about growing up gay in his hometown of Traverse City. Chasten’s joyful, witty social media posts, have resonated deeply with a large audience looking for a touch of humanity in their politics. In this uplifting memoir, I Have Something To Tell You, Chasten recounts his journey to finding acceptance and self-love. He recalls his upbringing in a rural, conservative region, where he felt different from his peers, father, and brothers. He tells the story of his coming out and how he’s healed from the painful responses and isolation. And with unflinching honesty, unflappable courage, and great warmth, Chasten Buttigieg relays his experience of growing up in America and embracing his true self, while inspiring young people across the nation to do the same. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nationalwritersseries/message

Meet Bonnie Garmus, author of Lessons in Chemistry, whose debut book immediately hit the New York Times Bestselling list. Lessons in Chemistry follows the story of chemist Elizabeth Zott, who is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it's the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel-prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results. But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America's most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth's unusual approach to cooking ("combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride") proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn't just teaching women to cook. She's daring them to change the status quo. Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nationalwritersseries/message

Meet Jeannette Walls, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle, her unforgettable childhood memoir that sold more than 5 million copies worldwide. Walls talks about her writing life and newest novel, Hang the Moon, with guest host Susan Odgers. Her highly anticipated novel follows the journey of Sallie Kincaid, a feisty and fearless, terrified and damaged young woman who refuses to be corralled in her small Virginia town during the Prohibition era. Sallie is the daughter of the biggest man in a small town, the charismatic Duke Kincaid. Born at the turn of the 20th century into a life of privilege, Sallie remembers little about her mother who died in a violent argument with the Duke. By the time she is just eight years old, the Duke remarried and had a son, Eddie. While Sallie is her father’s daughter, sharp-witted and resourceful, Eddie is his mother’s son, timid and cerebral. When Sallie tries to teach young Eddie to be more like their father, her daredevil coaching leads to an accident, and Sallie is cast out. Nine years later, Sallie returns, determined to reclaim her place in the family. That’s a lot more complicated than she expected. Sallie confronts the secrets that hide in the shadows of the Big House, navigates the factions in the family and town, and finally comes into her own as a bold, sometimes reckless bootlegger. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nationalwritersseries/message

The National Writers Series is pleased to partner with Interlochen Center for the Arts for An Evening with Ross Gay. NWS will livestream the event from Interlochen's Corson Auditorium. NWS and Interlochen Center for the Arts welcome Ross Gay who will discuss his latest book, Inciting Joy. Throughout the book, he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection, and also how we expand it. In an era when divisive voices take up so much air space, Inciting Joy offers a vital alternative: What might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together, to what we love? Full of energy, curiosity, and compassion, Inciting Joy is essential reading from one of our most brilliant writers. Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. He has released a new collection of essays, Inciting Joy. To ensure broad access to the transformative Interlochen experience, a portion of the proceeds from this event supports student scholarships. Guest Host Ari Mokdad is the National Writers Series new education director. She's a Detroit-born choreographer, creative writer, and passionate educator. Ari holds a Master of Arts in English from Wayne State University and three Bachelor of Arts degrees in dance, English and writing from Grand Valley State University. Ari will receive a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College and participate in the Centrum Artist Residency in 2022. She lives with her husband in Traverse City on the ancestral and unceded land of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Pottawatomie people, The People of the Three Fires. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nationalwritersseries/message

On March 10, New York Times Bestselling Author Dan Egan visited the City Opera House in Traverse City. He presented his new book, “The Devil’s Element, Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance.” Environmental reporter, Patrick Shea, was the guest host. Patrick works for Interlochen Public Radio, an NPR affiliate in northern Michigan. Egan writes about phosphorus, the source of great bounty―and now great peril―all over the world. Phosphorus has played a critical role in some of the most lethal substances on earth: firebombs, rat poison, nerve gas. But it’s also the key component of one of the most vital: fertilizer, which has sustained life for billions of people. In this major work of explanatory science and environmental journalism, Pulitzer Prize finalist Dan Egan investigates the past, present, and future of what has been called “the oil of our time.” He describes the race to mine it from the fabled guano islands to the far Pacific to the sand dunes of the Western Sahara. He reports on how our overreliance on phosphorus is today causing toxic “dead zones” in waterways from the Florida Everglades to the Mississippi River Basin to the Great Lakes and beyond. And he explores the alarming reality that diminishing access to phosphorus poses a threat to the food system worldwide―which risks rising conflict and even war. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nationalwritersseries/message

With "DRIVING THE GREEN BOOK: A Road Trip Through the Living History of Black Resistance" join award-winning broadcaster Alvin Hall on a journey through America’s haunted racial past using "The Green Book" as your guide. For countless Americans, the open road has long been a place where dangers lurk. In the era of Jim Crow, Black travelers encountered locked doors, hostile police, and potentially violent encounters almost everywhere, in both the South and the North. From 1936 to 1967, millions of people relied on The Negro Motorist Green Book, the definitive guide to businesses where they could safely rest, eat, or sleep. Most Americans only know of the guide from the 2018 Green Book movie or the 2020 Lovecraft Country TV show. Alvin Hall set out to revisit the world of "The Green Book" to instruct us all on the real history of the guide that saved many lives. With his friend Janée Woods Weber, he traveled from New York to Detroit to New Orleans, visiting motels, restaurants, and stores where Black Americans once found a friendly welcome. They explored historical and cultural landmarks, from the theatres and clubs where stars like Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Aretha Franklin performed to the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Along the way, they gathered memories from some of the last living witnesses for whom The Green Book meant survival—remarkable people who not only endured but rose above the hate, building vibrant Black communities against incredible odds. "DRIVING THE GREEN BOOK" is a standalone book, not a companion book to Hall’s award-winning podcast series. The book contains more contextual information as well as truly moving stories and personal recollections. Reading this book will expand readers’ understanding of America’s racial history and its connections to incidents, proposed legislations, and policy issues very much in the news today. Containing 25 outstanding black and white photos and ephemera, "DRIVING THE GREEN BOOK" is a vital work of national history that navigates the astounding, heartfelt, and disturbing past of the United States. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: ALVIN HALL is an award-winning television and radio broadcaster, author, political activist, and renowned financial educator. His numerous radio programs include The Tulsa Tragedy That Shamed America (2021, BBC Radio 4), The Green Book (2016, BBC Radio 4), and Jay-Z: From Brooklyn to the Board Room (BBC Radio 4). For five years on the BBC, he hosted the highly rated and award-winning series, Your Money or Your Life, on which he offered both practical financial and psychological advice. https://alvinhall.com/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nationalwritersseries/message

Celebrated NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg delivers an extraordinary memoir of her personal successes, struggles, and life-affirming relationships, including her beautiful friendship of nearly fifty years with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Four years before Nina Totenberg was hired at NPR, where she cemented her legacy as a prizewinning reporter, and nearly twenty-two years before Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court, Nina called Ruth. A reporter for The National Observer, Nina was curious about Ruth’s legal brief, asking the Supreme Court to do something revolutionary: declare a law that discriminated “on the basis of sex” to be unconstitutional. In a time when women were fired for becoming pregnant, often could not apply for credit cards or get a mortgage in their own names, Ruth patiently explained her argument. That call launched a remarkable, nearly fifty-year friendship. Dinners with Ruth is an extraordinary account of two women who paved the way for future generations by tearing down professional and legal barriers. It is also an intimate memoir of the power of friendships as women began to pry open career doors and transform the workplace. At the story’s heart is one, special relationship: Ruth and Nina saw each other not only through personal joys, but also illness, loss, and widowhood. During the devastating illness and eventual death of Nina’s first husband, Ruth drew her out of grief; twelve years later, Nina would reciprocate when Ruth’s beloved husband died. They shared not only a love of opera, but also of shopping, as they instinctively understood that clothes were armor for women who wanted to be taken seriously in a workplace dominated by men. During Ruth’s last year, they shared so many small dinners that Saturdays were “reserved for Ruth” in Nina’s house. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nationalwritersseries/message

Sports journalists Keith Gave and Tim Rappleye teamed up to write A Miracle of Their Own: A Team, A Stunning Gold Medal and Newfound Dreams for American Girls. Gave and Rappleye's book is a riveting tale about Team USA's stunning Olympic win against the Canadian women's hockey team in 1998, when they captured the coveted gold medal, inspiring little girls everywhere to play a game of their own. As a special treat, 1998 Olympian Lisa Brown-Miller joined the co-authors on stage to talk about her memories of the game. She was unknowingly pregnant with her first child, stood a diminutive five-foot-one, and, at age 31, was the team's oldest player. Yet she scored once during the winning game while adding two assists. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nationalwritersseries/message

On December 13th, the National Writers Series welcomed Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author Anna Quindlen to help answer some very important questions: What really matters in life? What truly lasts in our hearts and minds? Where can we find community, history, and humanity? In her lyrical new book Write for Your Life, the answer is clear: Through writing. This is a book for what Quindlen calls “civilians,” those who want to use the written word to become more themselves. Write for Your Life argues that there has never been a more important time to stop and record what we are thinking and feeling. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nationalwritersseries/message

Alice Wong's book, Year of the Tiger, highlights her life as an Asian American disabled activist, community organizer, media maker, and dreamer. She writes about her continued fight for disability justice, struggles with health insurance and bureaucracy. Author Stephanie Foo discusses Alice's book on her behalf. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nationalwritersseries/message

On October 20th, 2022, Grammy-nominated musician, singer, songwriter, performer, Live Aid board member and author Margo Price joined the National Writers Series for a conversation about her new memoir: Maybe We'll Make It. Recorded live at the State Theater in downtown Traverse City, this conversation (guest hosted by NWS communications director Karl Klockars) covers her childhood, her struggles to make it in the music industry, how she approached writing a book versus her music, and we even got to hear a few songs from Margo as well. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nationalwritersseries/message